Naomi Alderman - The Liars' Gospel

“You,” says Bar-Avo, “what’s your name?”

The man remains silent. Bar-Avo can see his dark eyes staring at him, hungrily he thinks. With great intensity. Bar-Avo is not daunted.

“I am Bar-Avo,” he says. “I command some of the zealous forces around Jerusalem. Tell me, friend, have you fought alongside us against Rome? Or have you battled for freedom in some other way?”

This is an obvious gambit, but in the context it is more likely to succeed than not. Men in Roman jails have often been rebels, or might like to style themselves so after the fact. At the very least, men in Roman jails have no love for Rome.

“I am going to die,” says the man slowly.

Ah. Yes. It takes some men this way.

“That is certainly their intention,” says Bar-Avo, “and they surely aim to carry it out. But if you have made your peace with God there is nothing to fear from death. Do not be afraid.”

“When I die,” says the man, “the whole of creation burns, and God Himself descends from heaven to judge the righteous and the guilty.”

Hmm.

“I can see you are a great teacher,” says Bar-Avo after some thought, “and that the spirit of God is in you. Tell me, do you have many followers?”

“All of the earth are my disciples, but it must not be spoken. Do not speak of it.”

It is very possible that this man will be of no use whatsoever. Nonetheless, he must sound him out. He has heard strange men like this before and knows their usual preoccupations.

“The time has not yet come for you to be revealed, I understand.”

The man nods slowly and shifts his hands. The shackles clink.

“The world will burn,” he says apropos of nothing, “when the abomination that causes desolation is in a forbidden place, then there will be great earthquakes and famines. It is then that I will come in clouds with great power and glory. Only then will my name be known.”

There is something about him, it is curious. Although the things that he says are nonsense and Bar-Avo has met ten times ten of his kind, nonetheless there is a conviction to his voice. Perhaps a hundred times a hundred such madmen have merely ordinary skill of rhetoric and so they are not believed and people see in them only a sad wreckage of a confused mind, but one in ten thousand are gifted with this combination: the calm manner of self-assurance, the penetrating gaze, the low commanding voice, the particular way of holding his limbs even now, even shackled. God throws such a one together from time to time: an arresting man. If he had not been thus mad, he could have been a great man.

“I know who you are,” says Bar-Avo. “I have heard about you. You are Yehoshuah of Natzaret. You have near six hundred men with you, they say.”

He had not heard that the man was captured. But he had heard that there was such a man: a healer, a caster-out of demons. Some of his own men had gone to seek healing for a wound that would not knit or a deaf ear.

“There will be more,” says Yehoshuah, “there will be many more. Listen”—and Yehoshuah leans forward and Bar-Avo, despite his mind, despite his sore limbs and his aching head, cannot help leaning forward too—“listen Bar-Avo, son of no one, don’t you think that God Himself will take his revenge for what has been done in this city? You make your plans and gather your forces to you, and you hope to overturn His will, but don’t you know that He has sent the Romans to scourge us so that we’ll repent and return to Him before the end of the world comes? Bar-Avo, king of bandits, God is angry with His creation and the time has come to fold it up and put it away. You are as much a tool of His will in this as any Roman soldier.”

Bar-Avo shivers. He has thought this himself, alone, late at night. Where is the Lord in all this? When he is fighting to rid the country of Rome, when he wants to see the holy Temple purified of their unclean bodies, isn’t their presence a sign that God has turned His face away? And if He has turned His face from Jerusalem, it can mean only one thing.

“Are you a prophet?”

Yehoshuah smiles.

“I may not tell who I am.” He pauses. “It is no accident that you and I are in this cell together.”

Bar-Avo struggles. There are more false prophets in Jerusalem than seeds in a pomegranate, and he cannot say why this one is striking him so forcefully. Perhaps it is just that his head is sore and he knows this may be his last night on earth.

“If you are God’s prophet, why not tell your men to join with ours? To fight with us and drive the Romans from Jerusalem and set up God’s house again?”

Yehoshuah smiles and wipes his dirty face with his dirty, shackled hand.

“Bar-Avo, murderer and leader of murderers, do you think God needs help to do His work?”

Bar-Avo is stung and impatient. This is the same rhetoric he has heard a thousand times from the people who support the Temple, who preach moderation, who don’t trust in God but in their own full bellies and warm beds.

“God has told us what He wants already. He says that no idol shall be tolerated, that we shall destroy all those who make graven images. He has given us work to do already and we are too cowardly to do it. Join with us, do the work God has commanded, turn the heathens out.”

“We are far beyond that time now,” says Yehoshuah. “God has cast His judgment on the land.”

Bar-Avo looks at him. His head throbs, his vision pulses with beads of light at the corners of his eyes. He knows he may die tomorrow on a cross set up by Rome.

“Shall we not try?” he says, and his voice is cracked and he longs for water although he knows they will not bring it, for he is already dead in a sense. “Shall we not strive with all our might to do what is needed, and if God in His wisdom decides to slay us all, shall we not then die knowing that we fought as hard as we could, that we tried for freedom?”

Yehoshuah says nothing.

“Shall we not strive to live? That is all we know, that life is good. Shall we not fight to gain our own lives?”

Yehoshuah says, and he smiles as he says it, “God’s will, not my will be done.”

And Bar-Avo, who has always been a fighter and a survivor, who has crawled out of holes not quite as dark but almost as dark as this one, finds himself thinking: very well, then. If this is your choice, you make my choice easier. Because he has a notion of what might happen next, since it is getting close to Passover and Jerusalem will be full of angry men and Pilate is a damned coward.

They come for them early in the morning. One guard places an earthenware vessel filled with dank, warm water in front of Bar-Avo. He drinks it greedily to the bottom before he even checks whether a similar jar has been given to Yehoshuah. It has, but the man drinks sparingly, and washes his face. Bar-Avo rubs at his face with the corner of his garment. He knows what is coming.

The guards kick at them to make them stand and, despite their shackled arms and legs, hustle them along the passage towards the light. The breath of wind is a cool kiss to the forehead. The sky is bright and clear with early-morning streaks of feathered cloud. Yehoshuah does not look up at the sky, but Bar-Avo cannot keep his eyes from it until they are dragged into the house where Pilate has his office.

They bring both the men in to see the Prefect, one after the other. Bar-Avo waits in the outer vestibule — he stands with his legs shackled and his hands now fastened behind him and his back aching and his knees aching and his shoulders aching, and he listens to the conversation taking place inside the room as best as he can hear it.

Pilate says, “They tell me you’ve been going around calling yourself the King of the Jews.”

Silence. The sound of birds singing in the courtyard outside and of a maid clanging pots downstairs.