Fifth Gospel(48)

The frankness of her words and the nearness of her womanhood stirred him. She knew how to remind him that he was something more than a soldier of Rome. He gentled her body over his and her fine legs straddled him.

He told her, ‘Is the world of men ready for this heart’s truth then, in your estimation?’

She smiled down at him. ‘To imagine that it might be, is a pleasant dream…’

There was the warmth of love between them. She bent to kiss him.

‘Your dream awakens me,’ he whispered in her ear.

‘But Philosophers must sleep, if they are to dream.’

‘Philosophers are lovers of wisdom,’ he gave back, ‘They dream while awake.’

And so she moved his soul from Pilate to Pontius, from statesman to man, and he forgot the melancholic rounds of his speculations and instead drank the living air of her soft Elysian fields. She was Persephone and he was her Pluto.

Very well.

Perhaps this was truth enough.





22


ISCARIOT




Judas lay in hiding for hours. When he came out all was quiet and it was near dark. He wanted to see what his work had realised.

He found a massacre.

His mind was taken by panic. He had not intended that it should end this way! He ran then, from himself, from the tempest of blood, from the vomit, the urine and excrement that covered the cobbled streets. He left the city with his heart pounding and with voices crying in his head.

Along the way, upon the road that led to the north, he came across his friend, Simon Zealotes who was fleeing with his brother Jude. He fell in with them and they gave him consolation, assuming that like them he had fought valiantly and escaped death. They saw his anguish and took it to be sorrow for his friends, having no suspicion in their hearts for the enormous betrayal that was carving him hollow.

Only Judas knew it, and the further he was from Jerusalem the more terrifying was the clarity in his head. He had shed the blood of Abraham, which to a Jew was the same as killing the father of his people. He had slain his father and succumbed to the seduction of Rome – a harlot who would never be his mother!

As they travelled the road that followed the river Jordan their party came to a bend in the river. Here, they saw a great crowd gathered around a large man dressed in skins. This man spoke of repentance and of the imminent coming of the Messiah; he told the crowds that only by being immersed in water could they be cleansed of their sins before His coming. He also said that he would know those who were ready, just by looking at them. These he called the lambs. The others, the vipers, he would turn away, for they were not ready for what was new.

Judas turned his mind to these words and considered his situation in a different light. He had done a terrible thing, but his intentions had not been evil ones – he had only desired to prepare the way for the Messiah! If he were cleansed of his sins he could start again, as this man professed was possible. A clean slate! But there was the risk, he reasoned, that such a man would recognise his crime just by looking at him. Would he not then pronounce him to be a viper and denounce him before the world?

Uncertain, he stood on the river’s lip. The others, taken by the Baptist’s words, had already taken off their cloaks and were entering the water. Judas considered that it might be his destiny to die here and now, and to have it over with. For how could he live with the terrible weight of his crime on his shoulders? A burden, he knew, that would grow more weighty by the day. Then again, in the depths of his heart, in his sinews, his muscles, his bones, a voice spoke to him of his grand place in God’s design. If this were so, well, the baptiser would cleanse him of his sins and mention not a word of his misdeeds. He would take this as a sign that God yet favoured him.

When at last he stood before the man, he felt himself stripped naked and observed. He waited long, while those eyes probed him with a fierce intensity. It seemed like hours, but it was only a moment.

John the Baptist said nothing.

A great enthusiasm replaced his woes. God had not forsaken him! His ideal had not been misguided. Misguided had been his means, but not his ends!

The baptiser put a hand behind Judas’ back and soon he was entering into the nullity of the water. Fear gripped him and he struggled but then came a sense of peace and abandon, a loosening of the burden. He had never felt so light! When he came out of the water the world looked different, as if he were looking through another man’s eyes.

Afterwards it was possible for Judas to join the others as one of John’s disciples, without guilt or concern. Day after day he was among them. He ate his meals with them, and listened to the words of the teacher. In the night he slept with them in huts made of rushes and felt that finally he had found a home and a family, for he sensed he belonged among these men, who were so unlike him in their experience and education – the simple fishermen from Galilee. It was as if he were rediscovering something long lost to him, as if in their midst he were reliving the miracle of the age of the Maccabees who had fought and died side by side.