Naomi Alderman - The Liars' Gospel

“We know that God is in the heavens,” said Yehoshuah. “He looks down on us all from there as from the top of a mountain.”

Iehuda felt it. God looking down on him. He had forgotten.

“God doesn’t choose his dwelling place by accident,” said Yehoshuah. “Look at the stars. Is any one of them raised a single cubit above his fellows? Has God placed a crown upon one of them? Do they rule one another?”

Iehuda shook his head.

“So, think.”

“If we cannot fight Rome, we must become their slaves…” he began.

“Must we?”

Iehuda thought about it. His mind was so clear now, it was as if he had removed the top of his head and the starlit sky was pouring through him, into his heart.

“Could we somehow love them and continue to live as we always lived before they came…? But they would kill us.”

“Do you think so? A whole country?”

Yehoshuah moved his arm slightly, so his fingers touched Iehuda’s. Iehuda felt the touch as a burst of warmth starting in his hand and radiating up through his arm, across his chest, blooming in great sunbursts along his body.

Yehoshuah said, “It is possible to love with dignity. Listen. If a man hits you on the cheek, give him your other cheek to hit. That is what he wants — give it to him freely. If a soldier commands you to carry something for him for one mile, carry it two miles. That is love — to show you are giving it by choice as a free man, not because of a command. If they demand you give them your coat, give them your shirt too.”

Iehuda imagined it. A rainstorm. A soldier demanding he give up his coat — such things happen. And him taking off his shirt too and standing bare-chested in the rain for this ideal of love.

“They will take us for madmen.”

“Seeing such love will change them. This is how we will bring the message.”

“You are talking about a new earth,” he said, “and then what?”

Yehoshuah smiled.

“I do not know. But I believe my Father in heaven will find an answer for us.”

“And what are we to do?”

“Now?” Yehoshuah’s voice dropped very low. “God came to me in the desert and He told me to spread this word. It is my holy duty. And you, Iehuda, He has told me that you will come with me and help me and be my friend.”

Yehoshuah patted Iehuda’s flank, like a man thanking a loyal and obedient horse, pulled his robe around him and rolled over on the blanket to sleep.

Iehuda lay down but his whole body was vibrating like the plucked string of a harp. He knew he had to join them. When they walked on from Qeriot, over the dusty yellow hills north to Hevron, he would go with them. This man, he thought, this fervent, righteous man, would change the whole world.

There were more of them soon. And more, and more. They walked from town to town and in each place there would be some men — and once or twice a woman — to whom Yehoshuah was especially drawn, for whom he seemed to have a particular message, a new parable or saying. And they would sit talking until the fire died low and in the morning one or two or three men would walk on with them.

They became something, and it was not clear precisely how it had happened. In Iehuda’s memory, one day they were walking dusty-footed into a town and the old women were spitting out their chewed-up leaves as they passed and people were only coming to hear Yehoshuah because at least he was a new thing, like a peddler or traveling musicians. And then suddenly, arriving at a new village, people came out to meet them. Young men and women, and children, tugging on their robes and saying, “Is that him, is that him?”

But when he thinks of it, it is not so strange. Because of course, there were also the cures.

He had not made any cures in Qeriot. He did not always do it. Only when there was a certain kind of person or, Iehuda noticed, an especially large crowd. He felt unkind and unworthy for noticing this, but he could not put it out of his mind once he had seen it.

In Remez, where there were five children gone blind with the same pox that had afflicted Iehuda’s wife, Yehoshuah touched them on the head and whispered that God would comfort them and make them strong, but made no cure. In Chidyon, where a girl who had lost both legs and pulled herself on a little wheeled tray by her arms begged Yehoshuah to help her, he wept tears at her suffering, and prayed with her for courage and for the blessings of God, but no new limbs sprouted where the old ones had been.

But in Kfar Nachum there was a great crowd, about two hundred people, and several had brought members of their family who had been unwell for years. From among them, Yehoshuah picked out a man who was wailing and shouting and ripping at his own hair and garments. He was possessed by a demon, they could all see it, the kind who attacks the innocent and the guilty, who will jump into a child if they can.

Iehuda had seen demons like these rip a man slowly apart, cause him to dash his own head against a wall, or to attack his wife and children or to throw himself from a high place and make an end of his life. There had been a man in Qeriot like this, so tormented by the things the demons shouted to him in his own head that he bit chunks of flesh from his arms and the wounds began to stink and so he died.

This man in Kfar Nachum was snarling like a dog when they brought him to Yehoshuah, pulling off his cloak to show his bum to the women standing in a half circle beneath the tree. He snapped and howled and made to grab the women and tear at them with his teeth, and many ran from him and Iehuda was not surprised.

But Yehoshuah was not afraid. Two of the man’s brothers held him steady. They offered to sit on his chest to keep him still, but Yehoshuah looked into the man’s eyes and said, “You will be peaceful for me. For you know I am your master.”

And the man stared at him like a frightened dog finally finding the leader of his pack. There was fear in his eyes but also relief and a quality of begging.

“Let his arms and legs go,” said Yehoshuah.

“But master,” said the brothers, “he will run wild and attack the women, he has done it before.”

“Let him go,” said Yehoshuah, in the same level tone, still looking into the man’s eyes.

They let go and the man did not move.

“Tell me your name,” said Yehoshuah. “Demon in this man’s soul, tell me your name.”

The man rolled his eyes back in his head, and whined and howled and gnashed his teeth, but he did not move.

“Tell me your name,” said Yehoshuah again, “in the name of God our Father I command it.”

And then the demon in the man spoke. Its voice was a growl like a wolf and a low hiss like a lizard and it said, “I am Ba’al Nakash, the Lord of Snakes, and this man is mine.”

The people were amazed, because this demon had never told them its name before, and everyone knew that a demon can be commanded by its name.

So Yehoshuah put his hand on the man’s forehead, and even though his eyes rolled and his teeth gnashed he remained still.

Yehoshuah said, “Ba’al Nakash, in the name of God our Father I command you to come out of this man!”

The man fell to the floor with a great gasp and a choking sound. His body began to shake and the people muttered to each other, “That is the demon, trying to hold on.”

Yehoshuah knelt down and put his hands on the man’s chest and shouted, “Ba’al Nakash, I command you to come out of this man!”

The man writhed and hissed and bit through his own tongue so that blood and spittle foamed from his mouth. He clawed at the ground until his fingernails broke and bled on the stones, and he writhed and threw himself against the rocks until great bruises began to show on his body. Yehoshuah took a deep breath, let it out slowly and then, with one hand on the man’s chest, he gave his order.