Naomi Alderman - The Liars' Gospel

Bar-Avo’s dagger slides out so smoothly. No one sees it within the folds of the cloak. He finds the baker’s ribs with a steadying hand and sends the dagger through just here, behind the heart, with that horizontal slicing motion that cuts the heart in two. The baker says “ump.” That is all. It was an easy death, insofar as men are ever afforded an easy death. His body slides against the wall but the crowd does not let him fall completely to the ground quite yet, they are pressed so tightly. No one has even noticed. Bar-Avo moves a little away. It does not have to be far. It is not wise to try to run. He has learned that before.

He has already sidled up to the meat stall, is haggling with the vendor over the price of a pound of chicken hearts, when someone else finds the baker is dead. It is a woman. She is screaming over the body slumped sideways against the wall, the red flower blooming across his back.

People still remember the massacre in the public square. They know whose trick it is to conceal men with daggers in the crowd. Bar-Avo says to himself: it is not I who have done this, but Rome, who taught me that this is the way to bring fear to the city. The crowd begins to turn towards the baker’s body to find out what the commotion is. Now. It is time now.

“Romans!” shouts Bar-Avo. “Roman spies! They’re among us with their long daggers!”

“Yes!” shouts someone else, because people are always eager to spread bad news and to lie to augment it. “I’ve seen them in the crowd! I saw a soldier’s knife under a cloak! They’re here! They want to kill us all!”

There is a stampede then. Stalls are overturned, hot fat spitting as it fizzles on the moist stone and makes the ground slick, piles of good fresh bread trodden into the dirt, dogs barking and grabbing for unattended meat, apples rolling here and there, women screaming and men taking the opportunity to grab what they can. People fall and other people tread on them, and children are crushed up against the walls and little fingers are squashed underfoot. Bar-Avo sees a child screaming, under a teetering pan of hot oil for frying cakes, and he snatches him up, lifting him above his head, so that he is out of reach of the crowd, which now thinks with one mind.

That is what he has learned in his life. What a crowd thinks. How to change what a crowd thinks. How not to think like them.

He holds the child above the crowd, smiles at it as he would at any of his own children, gives it a roll he has snatched from one of the stalls, dipped in rendered goose fat. The child munches contentedly and when the commotion has settled down the mother finds them and takes her baby gratefully, with a smile.

By this time the market is quieter and almost empty, with just a few sobbing stallholders to count the cost. Let the people remember, he thinks. Let them remember that they are not free. That this happened today. Just because the Romans did not do it, the Romans could still do exactly this. They must never forget that these people are in their homeland. Whatever is necessary to do to be rid of them must be done.

This was the special thing Pilate taught them. The cloak and dagger. Bar-Avo and his men do not often do it. But sometimes, when things begin to seem too peaceful, when it appears that perhaps they have forgotten. People need to be reminded all the time. Most men will simply fall asleep if you let them.

They gather more and more men to them. Not just fighters but preachers, fishermen, healers, sailors, spies in distant lands. His men go combing the streets for people who will be sympathetic to their cause. There is a point when they are particularly interested in healers and holy men — people listen to these men when perhaps they will not listen to a man with a sword. If a man can heal, it is a sign that God is with him. They want God with them.

So they bring him, once, a man who worships that dead preacher, Yehoshuah, as they bring many men whom they have found preaching in the marketplace or teaching in a quiet spot at the edge of town. The worship of Yehoshuah is a rather esoteric cult, though not the strangest that exists, and the man seems grateful for the attention.

His name is Gidon of Yaffo and he is not far off Bar-Avo’s own age, rangy and quietly fervent, speaking as Yehoshuah did of the end of days, which will surely come within our lifetimes. He tells how Yehoshuah died and rose again from the grave and was seen by several people.

“Did you see it?” says Bar-Avo.

“I have seen it in my heart,” says Gidon of Yaffo.

“That is not the same thing. Did any man you would trust with your life see it?”

“I would trust them all with my life for they have seen the risen Lord.”

“But you did not know before to trust them. And if the Messiah is come,” says Bar-Avo, “why does not the lion lie down with the lamb? Where is the great crack of doom that presages the end of the world and the final judgment of all mankind? Where is the true king of Israel now, if he has performed this strange trick and returned from the grave? Why does he not take his throne?”

“These things will happen,” says Gidon of Yaffo, “soon and in our days. I have heard stories from the very mouths of those who saw miracles. Before this generation has passed away, there will be the signs and portents, the lord Messiah will return and the Temple will run red with blood.”

“That last,” mutters Bar-Avo to Isaac, the man who brought Gidon of Yaffo to him, “will surely happen, for we will make it happen. Fellow,” he asks, raising his voice, “will you take arms with us to fight the Roman scum?”

Gidon shakes his head. “We do not fight for this broken land and this corrupt people. When our Lord returns he will cleanse the earth himself.”

“Then you are of no use to me,” says Bar-Avo, and sends him on his way.

Isaac says to him, “Romans as well as Jews are taking on this teaching.”

Bar-Avo shrugs.

“I have heard it preached in synagogues in Egypt and in Syria. Slaves and women like it, for they say that they encourage all to join in, with no exceptions.”

“Tell me again,” says Bar-Avo, “when there are as many temples to Yehoshuah as there are to Mithras or to Isis.”

“It might happen,” says Isaac stubbornly. “My grandfather said he remembered his grandfather telling him of when only a few men worshipped Mithras. There were not always such temples. Gods rise and fall—”

“As the angels on Jacob’s ladder, yes, I know. And only our God rises above them all and lives forever. And what good will it do if you are right and the dead man Yehoshuah becomes a god?”

Isaac blinks.

“He was a Jew, Yehoshuah. If he were…not like Mithras or Ba’al, but if his worship were even as widespread as the cult of Juno—”

“Juno!”

“All right, Robigus then. Even Robigus, the god of crop blight, if he were even as loved as that…a Jew…might not the Empire soften towards us?”

Bar-Avo looks at him. What a kindhearted boy he is. How did he get to be so simple, in a world this hard?

Bar-Avo speaks very quietly and low and very slowly.

“Rome hates us,” he says. “We are their conquered people and we are dust under their feet.”

“But if—”

“Listen. If they want something from us, they will take it. They will not stop hating us. They will find a way to say that the thing they want was never ours to begin with.”

Isaac looks at him with those trusting cow eyes.

“Do you think that when they send our good oil to Rome they say, ‘This is oil pressed by Jews’? They say, ‘This is oil brought from the far reaches of the Empire by the might of Rome.’ If Yehoshuah ends by being loved in Rome they will find a way to use him against us.”