Naomi Alderman - The Liars' Gospel

Bar-Avo puts his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

“You fight bravely,” he says, “and you love peace. I know it is hard to understand. We want to find a way towards peace. But the only way is the sword. If we do not drive them out, one way or another they will crush us.”

And Isaac is still looking uncertainly towards the man who preached long after Bar-Avo has gone.

And then it comes time for him to do what perhaps he had always been destined to do. If we believe that God has seen all things before they come to pass, that every woman is destined to bear the children she does, and every betrayer is bound to betray and every peacekeeper intended by God to attempt to keep the peace, perhaps too a warmonger is destined for that purpose by the good Lord who made him.

On the hillsides the mothers weep for their fallen sons. In the marketplace men preach curious doctrines and strange new ideas to fit with these uncertain times. In the Temple, Annas the former High Priest and father and father-in-law of High Priests, dies quietly without having secured the lasting peace he longed for. He dies knowing that war may come again at any minute, and that the streets of Jerusalem are no less bloody than when the Empire first breached the Temple wall. His sons gather to mourn him and one of the youngest among them, Ananus, becomes High Priest in his stead.

And it is morning and it is evening. And it is one hundred and thirty years since Rome first breached Jerusalem and still she squats over the city, enforcing her will, enslaving the people. And something must be done. Something more extreme.

It is clear to all that they are on the verge of open war with Rome. There have been scuffles, Romans have been thrown out of the city and are pressing their way back in. Some urge war and some urge peace. Ananus, the new High Priest, makes a speech in the center of Jerusalem. It is a good speech and a merciful one, calling upon the people not even yet to despair, for they may still come to some good accommodation with Rome and there need not be war. He calls on them to think of the values of their forefathers, and the love which they feel for peace. Annas, his father, would have been proud of his son for giving this speech and the people are moved by it.

Bar-Avo does not hear the speech but he hears word of it from a dozen different men. Well. So much blood spilled and yet still the thing is not done. How quickly people forget the taste of freedom, swapping it for this easy comfortable thing they call peace. Sleep is peaceful. Death is peaceful. Freedom is life and wakefulness.

He feels a kind of contempt for the people of the land these days. He is fighting for them, but apparently they do not understand why or feel gratitude. He has to lead them by the hand through every part of the journey and still they can be swayed off course by any mildly effective rhetorician in the public square.

Well, sacrifices must be made. For the good of the people, sacrifices must be made.

There is a storm the night they invade the Temple. It’s not a coincidence. The Temple is guarded by thick walls, by strong men. There are barred gates which are lowered at night to keep the treasures inside safe while the men sleep. The whole city of Jerusalem is a great guard to the Temple also. If they had tried to take the Temple on a dark quiet night, the moment one man saw them he would have shouted the halloo to the city and Jerusalem would have defended her greatest treasure and dearest joy.

So when the storm blows up, they know God Himself is signaling to them that it is time. When it comes louder and louder, when the thunder begins to roll across the sky in almost ceaseless peals and the rain lashes down and the wind screams, then they know that God has given them the cover they need. No one will hear them now, and no shouts of alarm from the Temple will reach the city. They gather their tools and their weapons and they run through the rain up the hill to the place where God lives.

Up on the hill, although they do not know it, Ananus has looked out at the approaching storm and taken a message from it too. God is saying, in words as clear as fire, that no one will stir from their houses this night. The rain has given them a night of peace, while the thunder is His voice shouting His presence over the land. They are safe, they are well.

“Tell your men to sleep,” he says to the Levite head of the guards. “Leave a few men to stand watch, but let the rest of them sleep tonight.”

And Ananus takes to his own warm bed in the Temple enclosure, sends word to his wife in the city that all will be well this night, gives his prayers to God for a good night and that his soul will be returned to him in the morning when he awakes. He plugs his ears up with soft wool to drown out the noise of the storm, pulls his pillow under his head and sleeps.

At the gates of the outer courtyard of the Temple, Bar-Avo’s men gather. They are sodden already. The driving rain which the wind sweeps in all directions has poured on them like buckets emptied over their heads and flung at their bodies. This is not the gentle rain of blessing. It is the rain of anger, of the God who knows that His terrible will is to be done this night and who is already full of rage at those who dare to carry out His plan.

There are ten of them at this gate. There will be others elsewhere. Even with the protection of the storm, the work must be done as quickly as possible. Bar-Avo is not here yet — this is work for young men. The team at the gate is headed by Isaac, who will one day distinguish himself gloriously in battle but today is simply extremely competent, directing the men to cut through the five iron bars of the main gate.

They bring out their saws. There is no other way. The saws shriek, metal biting metal. It could not have been done on any other night — a single howling cut would have wakened a dozen men from the deepest slumber.

The rain drives and they are soaked through and dripping and their fingers slip. One man makes a deep cut in his own hand with the serrated saw blade, filled with flakes of rust and iron from the gate. They wrap it up and continue to work. A lone guard makes his solitary round of the ramparts at the top of the Temple wall. They press themselves into the shadows as he passes. Soon enough, one bar is free, then another, then another.

The skinniest of them presses himself through the gap and they can work the saw two-handed, so it goes faster. The fourth bar is out when a guard dozing in the outer courtyard thinks he sees something hazily, through the rain, moving at the gate. He is a large man, fat and tall, carrying a stout belly proudly before him and a stout club by his side. As he sees the men at the gate he shouts back behind him and breaks into a heavy run.

There is not enough space for the others to get through yet. The skinniest of the men at the gate — his name is Yochim — freezes, his shirt and cloak plastered to his skin by the rain. He is shuddering. The guard grabs him by his clothes, hurls him against the gate, shouting and calling through the storm, but the thunder crushes his words. He bellows again for the other guards, as he picks up Yochim and then roars into the boy’s ear, “Where are the others? Where are your fucking friends?”

Yochim, dazed, blinded by the rain, deafened by the blow, lashes out with his hand, which he finds is still holding the saw, and the guard goes down, his face raked and his eye sliced in two. He is screaming and writhing as one of the other men passes Yochim a sword through the gate and, after a nod of confirmation, Yochim brings the point down through the guard’s throat.

The body jerks and trembles and is still. Yochim sinks to his knees for a few quiet moments while the wind whips up again around them and the thunder roars and there are three quick flashes of lightning one after the other. Then he scrambles to his feet again, wipes his face, leaving a long smear of bright red blood on his wet cheek, and they begin to saw again.