Lars Sveen - Children of God

“What?” says Peter. “Say that again.” John is sitting next to him, trying to explain how he saw Thomas and Andrew push and pull them along down from the Temple Mount and out among all the other people.

“Where are they now?” asks Peter.

John shakes his head. “Aren’t you listening to what I’m saying? Don’t you get it? We scattered, nobody knows where anybody is.”

Matthew comes running into the stable, and Peter spins around, holding his knife up in front of him.

“It’s me,” says Matthew. “Peter, it’s me.”

“I know it’s you,” says Peter. “Where are the others?”

“It’s Jesus, Philip, and Judas,” says Matthew, breathing heavily, with sweat running down from his hair and through his beard.

“Philip and Judas?” says John.

“Just the three of them?” says Peter, and Matthew nods. Peter closes his eyes and leans back against a beam. They’re hiding in a small stable, and the dry air in there makes him cough. His clothes are torn, and one of his feet hurts.

“I’ve got to find out what’s happened to them,” says Peter, spitting and wiping his mouth. Matthew and John look at him.

“There are soldiers everywhere,” says John. “You can’t go out there now, we’ll have to wait until darkness, we’ve got to get out of the city.”

Peter gets up to feel his foot. He can walk, but it will be difficult to run.

“Wait here,” he says, and John and Matthew sit there in the hay, staring at the tall, bearded man as he leaves them.

There are people everywhere, and where there aren’t any people, there are animals and walls and openings in walls and the clatter of the soldiers’ armor and weapons. Peter tries to follow the flow of the crowd, but there are currents moving in different directions: one carries him along for a time, and then another carries him along again, and eventually he breaks free and walks toward the steps up to the Temple Mount, where he can see several soldiers gathered. Peter goes up to two soldiers sitting on the ground, with their helmets down next to them. He asks what’s happening, and the soldiers look at him without saying anything.

“Rebels in the Temple,” one of the soldiers mutters, waving his hand at Peter. “Move along.” Peter stands there. The other soldier, who hasn’t said anything yet, starts shaking his head.

“They all look the same to me,” he says. “We could’ve chosen anybody, whoever they say we should take.” He looks around him, but Peter’s the only one listening to him.

“Who have you taken?” Peter asks.

“A rebel or a Jew,” says the soldier. “Or two or more, I can’t tell the difference. A few days ago, we cut down a few of them planning to storm the Temple. We surprised them while they were trying to sneak in at night. They put up a fight, quite a lively one. We hanged some of them. If it was up to me, I’d have let them tear down the whole place on top of themselves.”

“Shut up,” says the other soldier. “Nobody’s listening to you. Who the hell are you talking to?”

“These things happen, you know, and what about you?” says the soldier, who just keeps on talking. “Have you got anybody to talk to?”

Peter stands there, looking at the man sitting in front of him. The soldier is talking out loud to himself. His hands are large and coarse, his head is shaved bare, and his eyes are small and pale.

“When are they going to be crucified?” Peter asks, unable to recognize his own voice. He needs water, where can he find water?

The soldier coughs and laughs simultaneously. “There’s only one left to string up,” he says.

“Shut up,” says the other soldier again, who’s now started staring at Peter.

“They’re on their way,” the chatty one goes on. “An example for you lot during this festival of yours, what is it you call it? Passing over or something?”

“Shut up,” says the other soldier for the third time. “I can’t stand listening to you.”

“I don’t care,” says the soldier.

Peter turns to go, leaving while the soldier behind him is still talking out loud to himself. He pushes his way past people, trips over a goat, gets up again, and walks into a man who’s holding a cockerel tightly in his hands and tells him to move. Peter steps to the side and tries to see how he can get back to the stable. He tries to spot somebody he knows, someone from their own group. He goes into a gateway, where the walls let off a cold odor.

“Lord,” he says, there’s that word again, he hasn’t got any other words. He spits and kicks sand over the spittle. Two soldiers suddenly appear, calling him a pig, a slob, telling him to clean it up. Before he can say anything, they strike him in the throat and between the shoulders and shove him to the ground. They spit on him and move off. Peter gets up and brings his hand to his throat. It’s difficult to breathe, but he doesn’t dare to spit, he doesn’t dare to cough. He lowers his head and tries to move along as calmly as possible.

John and Matthew greet him with an embrace. They sit together in the cramped stable and see the light fall outside. Peter holds his fingers up in front of him, they’re ten cold bones with flesh and blood and skin around them, and he lowers his hands to whisper a prayer, but he can’t say it like it should be said, and he tells the others that it’s time to go.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” he says.

They walk out of Jerusalem, down to the Well of En-Rogel, and sneak through the Valley of Hinnom. Peter’s foot hurts, so Matthew props him up. They walk around the city walls until they get onto the road that leads all the way up to Caesarea. They turn back in the evening, but the light has gone, and the night is getting darker and darker. There’s nobody to be seen, only the glow of torches on the city walls, and the outlines of soldiers at the entrance. Matthew mumbles something about going back, but he’s cut off by the sound of dogs, and he starts to cry. He punches himself in the face, and Peter has to help him.

“We can’t go there,” says Peter. “The soldiers are there, the dogs are already there, it’s too late, it’s over.” Matthew tries to break free from Peter, but Peter holds on to him tightly. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he says.

The night envelops them, and they stop to rest only when daylight comes.

They walk all the way up through Samaria until they get to Capernaum and the Sea of Galilee.

Some arrived before them, others arrive later, and they all stay there.

Peter finds Andrew, who holds out his arms, and Peter embraces him.

“You came back,” says Andrew. “It’s the water, it calls out to us.”

Peter tries to get Andrew to tell him what he saw, what he’s heard, but Andrew just wants to hold on to him.

“Everything’s been torn away from us, our dreams too,” Andrew whispers to him one evening.

They all live in the same house. They tell each other stories about what happened in the Temple, how every one of them got away. Some women say they saw an angel who spoke to them as they walked through the night. One of them, with open sores, says that he has new wounds in his hands and around his ankles, and that he felt a pain in his legs. Thomas says that Jesus told him the secrets of his kingdom. Peter doesn’t listen to them.

He only sits up and leans forward slightly when one of them starts telling of Judas’s and Philip’s death.

“Did you see it?” he asks. One of the ones with open sores tells him that the soldiers let him go, as they didn’t want to be near him or talk to him. He found the remains of the bodies of both Judas and Philip. They’d been buried under stones that dogs had removed before they started eating their flesh. John tells them to be quiet and gathers everybody together in prayer where they’re sitting, and they pray to the Lord.