The Kingdom of the Wicked

by Anthony Burgess

  ‘I didn’t have to be one of Messalina’s customers. I’m Roman born. As I say, check up on it. Meanwhile don’t do anything you may regret.’

  The tribune stroked his two blue chins. Then he said to the centurion: ‘Untie him. Lock him up for the night. We’ll have their priests on to this business in the morning. You know the penalty for beating up a Roman citizen?’

  ‘I do, sir, I do.’ So Paul was untied and led into the castle. The flagellators, thwarted, tried to flagellate a pair of alighting sparrows. Unharmed, they flew off. Paul, from his cell, watched other birds homing to eaves as night fell quickly. They brought him a soldier’s meal: dark bread and a piece of rank goatmeat with blood in it. Also wine. He drank the wine, composing letters in his head. It was by virtue of the Roman courier system that they got to their readers, heads of congregations who read them aloud at the love feast or eucharistic service. Put to death therefore whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, greed, idolatry. Because of these, the wrath of God is coming … Husbands, love your wives and do not be harsh with them … Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged. He saw a whole sunlit world of white stone, the odour of camel dung and of decaying figs on the air, and the words were perhaps no more than shaped air. He was growing into middle age, the night air was chill on his total baldness, and he felt that his words were heard but not well understood, that Christ had grown into a legend, that he had been wasting his time. His tents would outlive his preaching. Then he smiled, recognising certain familiar devils of discouragement which negatively proved that there had been no waste: the devils knew if men did not.

  He thought of his own death, which might not be much longer delayed. If he believed, if he truly believed, then he would carry into a world beyond time the gifts of time, which he sleepily envisaged as an earthenware dish of the dried raisins of Corinth. Not an angel, any more than Christ was. Human but immortal with a kind of purged sensorium. So the pleasures of the next world would be, in a manner, of the senses. Meaning a barrier to the experience of pure spirit, which meant denial of the ultimate vision. Meaning that Christ, also a creature of sense, was barred from merging with the Father. That explained why Father and Son, though consubstantial, were distinct persons. Theology. Life was too short for it, but he foresaw before sleeping men writing long books about the personality of Christ and neglecting the multiple message. The point was that the thing had rooted, message or metaphysics. It could not be willed away, not even by God the Father himself. And God the Father was closer to that damnable unknown god of the Athenians than to the Jehovah to whom he had dedicated his ram and his lambs. He slept.

  He was awakened at dawn to be taken to an emergency session of the Sanhedrin. There was already an energetic crowd around, spitting through the steel cage of his Roman military escort. He was handed over to Temple guards who gratuitously thumped him into the council chamber. The Roman escort waited without, grumbling. Paul looked at the yawning priests and holy laymen as they assembled. He recognised few of them, but he could tell the Sadducees from the Pharisees. The latter had red farmers’ faces and gnarled hands; the former had a Roman look. All stood when the chief priest came in. He was new, the successor of Caiaphas, thin and with a look of inner torment, perhaps intestinal. He was given a paper by a clerk. He glanced at it and said:

  ‘You, Saul of Tarsus, are charged with a serious breach of the Jewish law.’ Before he could say more, Paul said:

  ‘My name is Paul. I admit no breach. Brothers, I have lived before God in all good conscience until this day.’ He prepared to say more but the chief priest, to the surprise not only of Paul, struck him with a ringed right hand on the mouth. Paul bled. He was sick of having to bleed all the time. He heard with anger the priest’s words:

  ‘You blasphemer, you have the gall to claim purity of conscience before this holy assembly here met?’ Paul snarled:

  ‘God shall strike you, you whitewashed wall. You stand in judgement on me according to the law and you smite me contrary to the law.’

  A Sadducee arose and said: ‘Fellow, you address Ananias the high priest of God. Watch your mouth.’ So. A forked name. To the Christians an Ananias was no more than a liar. Paul said:

  ‘I know what is written: you shall not speak evil of a ruler of the people. But nobody told me he was the high priest. Nor did he behave in a manner befitting a high priest.’ Somebody at the back of the assembly guffawed briefly and Ananias looked daggers. Paul gathered that there was little reverence for him except among the wealthier Sadducees. He said boldly: ‘I see the disposition of your council. I see Sadducees. I see Zealots. I see Pharisees. What do the Sadducees believe? That there is no resurrection, that death ends all. But the Pharisees accept the hope of the resurrection of the dead. Brothers, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee. The dead rise as Jesus of Nazareth rose—’

  There was some commotion among the Sadducees. The Zealots spat, and one cried: ‘Resurrection of the free Jewish state under God.’ A Pharisee somewhat younger than Paul banged on the marble floor with his staff and raised dust. He shouted: ‘I smell conspiracy.’ Paul did not understand. ‘What fault do you find in this man? Go carefully. You cannot always know who you are dealing with.’ Then the dissension grew very loud. Another Pharisee arose and yelled over all:

  ‘We are met to deal with a mere frivolity. I am sick of the hypocrite and the timeserver. He was right when he spoke of a whitewashed wall. Profaner of the sacred office. Greed and rapacity. While we are met let us condemn who should be condemned. Ananias, son of Nedebaeus, admit you take the tithes that should go to the low priests. Friend of the Romans, licker of the Emperor’s arse.’ There was now some very unseemly punching. Ananias trembled, white as a whitewashed wall. Then the outer doors were battered open and the centurion who had accompanied Paul hither came in with troops behind him. He was surprised to see Paul standing aloof from the noise and unhandy fisting. Ananias glowered at the centurion and cried:

  ‘This is a holy place.’

  ‘It sounded like it. Come on, you, sir, back to headquarters.’ This was to Paul, who nodded and submitted to being caged in by barelegged troops with drawn steel for the march back to the tower. He was howled at by many who did not know why they were howling. He saw Luke and Trophimus, much disturbed and shouting what sounded like Courage. James he did not see. Paul was marched back to his cell.

  In a tavern later that day a group of Zealots listened to Amos and Job, the ill-favoured visitors from Antioch. The leader of the Zealots was named Jotham, and his hard young face was much scarred with a pox picked up in Samaria. ‘So,’ Jotham said, ‘that’s his story, is it? To hell with the kingdom of this world and forget you’re a Jew. Get rid of him and that’s one enemy out of the way. We have to make a start somewhere. If he’s a Roman, as he says he is, then it’s a beautiful situation. They won’t react, they daren’t. Sons of the kingdom kill a Roman citizen. And that’s the end of the Nazarenes.’

  ‘How?’ asked a Zealot named Jehoash, a lad of few words.

  ‘Get the Sanhedrin to have him brought in for another examination. Not the full council, no Pharisees, that can be worked. Stick the knife in then.’

  ‘Difficult.’

  ‘Look,’ Jotham said fiercely as the serving boy put fresh wine on the table. ‘I’m ready to propose an oath on this business. No eating or drinking till it’s done. Tell the priests. We curse ourselves till we do it.’

  ‘Tell Ananias?’

  ‘Not that lump of goal’s dung. Yochanan the disciple of Pinqai.’ The Zealots guffawed, but the visitors from Antioch did not understand. If they had thought about the writing of the name they would have seen that Hananiah spelt backwards gave Yochanan. The twenty-fourth psalm of David had the line: ‘The temple court cried out “Lift up your heads, O ye gates and let Yochanan the son of Narbai and the disciple of Pinqai enter and fill his belly with the divine sacrifices.’” Ananias was noted for
his greed. Pinqai suggested pinka, a dish of stewed meat with onions to which the high priest was partial. In some ways the Jews were a subtle people. The boy setting the wine down on the table heard that business about not eating and drinking and was prepared to take it away again, but Jehoash clamped his heavy hand on the crock handle. Presumably the oath was to go into effect tomorrow or the next day. The boy went off.

  The boy left the tavern and ran all the way to the Tower of Antonia. He started to run up the outer stairs but was stopped by a soldier. The soldier was ready at first to push him away, but the lad was very earnest. You had to be careful since that Jew being a Roman citizen business. Best leave decisions to the higher command. The soldier let the boy climb up to the centurion, who had just finished guard inspection on the middle terrace. The boy spoke to the centurion. The centurion took the boy kindly by the hand and led him in to see the military tribune.

  Later that day the military tribune dictated a letter. It took a long time, he had difficulty with the Ciceronian kind of Latin. His amanuensis put his grammar right silently. ‘Claudius Lysias, tribune in Jerusalem, to the most excellent governor Felix in Caesarea, greetings and long life. This man was seized by the Jews and was about to be killed by them. I rescued him, having learnt that he is a Roman citizen. Anxious – no, desirous to know the grounds of their accusations, I had their council examine him. He was accused about certain questions of their law, but nothing was laid to his charge worthy of death or even imprisonment. Now it has come to my notice that there is a murderous plot against this man, therefore I send him to you forthwith. I am charging his accusers also to speak against him in your presence. Got that? Usual flowery stuff to end it.’

  This Greek Lysias, who had taken on the name of the Emperor when buying citizenship from the Empress, had his own good reasons for getting Paul off his hands. If the Jews killed him there would be a lengthy inquiry, and it would certainly come out that he had in his time taken bribes from Jews. Everybody did it. A perquisite of colonial service. Best to throw the whole business into the lap of the procurator up there in Caesarea with his Jewish princess of a wife. He ordered a horse for Paul, a mounted squadron and a platoon of infantry. That should be enough. Set off at nine in the evening, when these noisy Jewish bastards would be in bed with their daggers under the pillow, and march steady, five minutes’ break in the hour, be at Antipatris before dawn, not Jewish territory so safe, send the bulk of the escort back to Jerusalem, a handful of cavalry enough to take him to Caesarea, there let Felix, miserable sort of a swine, strange how a man’s name is always a kind of joke, take over. There it was, then.

  Paul, his rear sore, was lodged in a neutral kind of chamber, locked but not a prison cell, until the Sanhedrin had its case against him prepared and a counsel for the prosecution appointed. He was fed regularly on bread, beans and watered wine, and he was allowed writing materials. There were always letters to write. After five days he was permitted warm water for washing and a new robe. Somebody in the palace, clearly, had not unfriendly feelings towards him. Probably the wife of the procurator, daughter of the unlamented Herod Agrippa I. Washed and enrobed, he was led by a couple of Syrian private soldiers to the hall set aside for the hearing. Ananias was there, glowering, with three assistant priests, and there was a portly man puffing over his papers, introduced as Tertullus, a Greek Jew from the look of him. The procurator came in with his personal escort and sat resignedly on a kind of throne. He irritably waved a fly whisk. Paul took him to be of lowly origin, a civil servant who had worked his way up by threats and bribery. He was to learn later that he was a freedman who had served Claudius’s mother Antonia and added the forename Antonius to the servile Felix. Also that his brother was Pallas, financial minister to Claudius. Felix’s wife Drusilla was to tell him this. The procurator frowned at Paul and asked where he was from. From Tarsus in Cilicia, no mean—Let this business begin. Tertullus bowed portlily and started:

  ‘Seeing, O illustrious Felix, that under your governance we enjoy much peace, and that by your providence many evils have been corrected in this territory, we accept the judgement you shall be pleased to make, most excellent Felix, with all due gratitude in the matter now laid before you. I will be brief and put off all tediousness and say merely that here we have a most pestilential fellow, a mover of insurrections among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect called by some Nazarenes and by others Christians. Another matter, and the one immediately at issue: he tried to profane the Temple in Jerusalem by leading thither a man of Gentile persuasion contrary to the sacred law of the Jews. By your own examination, O illustrious one, you will see these things to be so. I will not presume to put into your honourable mouth the judgement meet to be meted out, but would merely at this time emphasise the gravity of his crime.’

  While he drew breath to continue, the procurator shook his flywhisk and then pointed it at Paul, saying: ‘Let the accused speak.’ Paul smiled and spoke suavely, saying:

  ‘I know, sir, you have been a judge of this nation for many years, and therefore I make my disposition to you cheerfully and with confidence. Briefly, then. I have spent no more than twelve days in Jerusalem. In that time I have stirred up no crowds, neither in the synagogues nor in the city. I have not even been involved in any religious disputation. Nothing I am accused of can be upheld. The Jews of Asia who initiated my accusation are, I see, not present. Those of Jerusalem can find me guilty of one thing only, and that a thing confidently accepted by the sect called the Pharisees, who are of right and tradition represented in the religious councils of Israel—’

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘That after death there is resurrection. Believing this, I do not offend against the ancestral creeds of the Jews. Wherein then am I guilty?’

  ‘And the other matter?’

  ‘Taking a Gentile into the Temple? This is expressly forbidden. Would I knowingly lead a friend who has come far with me to his condign death? I note that there are none here present who can bear witness to this allegation.’

  Claudius Felix grunted. There then entered a very young lady of exquisite dark beauty who smiled at Paul and kissed Felix on the crown of his head. This would be the lady Drusilla, his wife. She stood behind the chair, smiling now more generally. Felix said: ‘I know the ways of the Jews. I will consider the matter at greater length with the accused himself. Clear the court.’

  The priests were not happy about this, but Tertullus bowed and bowed his way out backwards. Felix summoned with his flywhisk Paul at the decent distance of a prisoner at the bar to approach the procuratorial chair. Paul did so, catching a whiff of the procuratorial consort’s perfume. Felix said: ‘I have ratified from the records that you’re a Roman citizen. This means you have money.’

  ‘A Roman born. I have no money.’

  ‘A pity. Money can often resolve things that legal wranglings make more and more – well, knotty. You are acquainted with the lady Drusilla?’

  ‘Honoured. Daughter of a king of Israel.’

  ‘She prefers to be known as the consort of a Roman procurator. Listen. I hate nonsense. I hate hypocrisy. I hate petty kings. I hate law. I love expediency.’

  Drusilla began to speak to Paul in Aramaic but then changed to charming Greek with a strong rasp on the chi. ‘My father, I regret to say, did things not easily forgivable. Neither to you Christians nor to Roman justice. Will it surprise you that his daughter is anxious to hear something of the new belief?’

  ‘And,’ Paul smiled, ‘her husband – who hates law but loves expediency?’

  ‘Paul, I’ll be candid with you,’ Felix said. ‘I don’t want to judge your case. I’m not sure that I even understand it. Moreover, I’ve been recalled to Rome. Some nonsense about undue harshness in putting down an insurrection in Samaria. You know the sort of thing. While I wait for a ship to arrive you’re welcome to expound your doctrine. But you’re in custody. The custody may be long. Your case will be heard by my successor, and Castor and Pollux
alone know when he’ll be here.’

  ‘With respect, as there seems to be no case to answer, might it not be expedient to let me go?’

  ‘Ah, you’re a Jew but you don’t seem to know the Jews. That’s the Roman in you, I suppose. They won’t be satisfied with an acquittal. If I dismissed the whole business and let you take ship from Caesarea to Tarsus or wherever you want to go, those gentry in Jerusalem would find out quickly enough and tear the place to shreds. I don’t want to leave here in the middle of a fresh insurrection. These damned sicarii – you’ve heard of them?’

  ‘I’ve heard of them.’

  ‘No, I’ve enough on my plate as it is. This Nero is something of a new broom. Only a boy, but he knows all about cleaning the provinces up, or so he thinks.’

  ‘What was that name?’ Paul frowned.

  ‘Of course, you won’t have heard, will you? We have a new Emperor. Claudius has been turned into a god.’

  ‘Custody, then,’ Paul sighed. ‘I submit.’

  ‘You have to, don’t you? All right, Drusilla, ask him your questions.’

  Time. Time. We have been living, with Paul, in Claudian time. Now we shift to Neronian time. Time is not, as some say, a universal waterclock but a submissive consort of place. But the chronicler, servant of Chronos, has to forget that place is the reality and time a phantom hovering over it like the smoke from a stewpan. Whipped by his master, he goes back in time, which is absurd. What is now to happen has already happened.

  Claudius lay in uneasy sleep. Agrippina shook him gently awake.

  ‘I’m ttttired. I have this ppppp—’

  ‘I know. Dear Claudius.’ She embraced his ageing bulk with a show of love, even of desire. Sick as he was, he began creakingly to respond. ‘No, dearest, not now,’ she crooned, then deliciously laughed. ‘Time to eat. Supper’s ready. You’ve been starving yourself. Silly Seneca and his stoical self-denial. You must eat to be healthy. I’ve ordered your favourite dish – wild mushrooms.’