Jonathan Trigell - The Tongues of Men or Angels

The olive trees about them shift and dance in the wind, swaying like gladiators made drunk for the crowd’s amusement. The olive trees are hollowed out in the centre, as if they should be dead. But they do not die. They thrive, as little else has thrived since the Romans came. There are twists and shards of iron nails embedded in some of the trees. When a multitude of men are executed at once, they are sometimes nailed to living olive boughs, to howl in the dark like mandrake fruit.

The second hour, in an agony, Yeshua prays more earnestly, and his sweat tumbles as if it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And the Twelve pray with him. This event must come to be and they have nothing left to make it but their own force and belief.

God will come, if all with you are holy .

The third hour, though anguished and distressed, the disciples pray on. They cry and beg. Through souls filled with sorrow even to death. Past exhaustion from their efforts, they prostrate and petition. And Yeshua sees that some start to tire but he says to them: ‘Rise and pray. Don’t enter into temptation. Don’t give up yet.’

Steeled, re-girded, they discover new strength. But such energies are hard to maintain: even for men as pious as the Twelve, even for those as filled with faith and conviction as they, the spirit is willing, but the body is weak.

Yet they continue. What else is there but to go on, but to fall once more onto the ground and pray? They are in the Valley of Decision and this must be decided. God will come. There is no space for doubt. Hesitation cannot be allowed. In.

Slowly disquiet creeps. A black beast crouched in the shadows. One after another the Twelve begin to fail internally, unable to command their own belief. They continue their wailing praying, but they falter in their conviction. They catch each other’s eyes and see the uncertainty there, and the doubt once released cannot be recaptured. The beseeching and the chanting continue. Yeshua is building once more into a crescendo of supplication and the Twelve are with him, but they are not with him. All of them have now confessed to themselves that this is not going to happen, not now, not tonight.

What is going to come to pass is the only thing more dreadful, more to be feared than earthquakes and plagues and angels: nothing. Void. Absence. The darkness is devoid of anything but olive trees and the wind. And their hopes are as hollow as the olive trees and the heavens are as empty as the wind. And if you could choose, you would never start from here. But since they cannot choose, the Twelve continue praying.

The Romans bring a terrible relief when they at last arrive, but at least it puts a stop to this. At least it is an ending. At least the Twelve can now admit — staring in disbelief through eyes drained and straining, tear-streaked and rubbed raw — that this isn’t working. At least they can fight now, and maybe God will be with them. Maybe this is how He wants it to run.

So Cephas charges them, one man into the mass. A bull into a pack of dogs. He storms into the traitorous men of the high priest, who head this cohort of Romans. They scatter and he hacks an ear from one as they do. But Cephas is smashed to the ground by the shields of the Romans behind. The Romans don’t scatter. The Romans train daily for moments like this. And their shields are impregnable as the walls of a fort. Some of the shields are new. Some are dented and battle-blooded. All of them are stained with dust and crossed with the blasphemous thunder bars of war-god Mars.

Charging such a shield line unarmoured is suicide. But the rest of the disciples draw their swords and make ready to run at it anyway, exhausted from effort, but mad with God and anger. They were to have had twelve legions of angels. But the angels haven’t come and the Romans have. With them Temple Guards and slaves and men-at-arms of the high priest. One without an ear, but all with blades and clubs and torches that flame in the darkness, showing the warped and wretched shapes of the olive trees.

And only now does Yeshua rise, only now does he, shaking, stop his prayers. And even the Roman who is about to fling his spear into floored Cephas ceases when Yeshua cries: ‘Enough!’

Yeshua is a prince.

Cephas shouts that they will prevail. Cephas shouts that even if the whole world falls away, he will not.

But Yeshua answers, ‘Enough, Cephas, enough, brother, it’s too late.’

And Yeshua asks the Romans who they want. And when they say Yahushua son of Joseph , he tells them it is he.

Then he says, ‘And since I am the one you want, let these others go.’

Jochanan shouts: ‘My King, let’s fight? We brought the swords!’

But Yeshua shakes his head.

Flanked by a phalanx of Roman spearmen, the Temple Guards advance towards him. Encircling but skulking, like jackals about a lion, they bind Yeshua’s hands.

Yeshua recognizes the guard who ties the thongs that bite into his wrists and says to him: ‘I remember you. I saw you in the Temple courts. You didn’t dare lay a hand on me then. But now it’s your hour: when darkness reigns.’

The centurio of the Romans — cold-eyed and stiff as lance — gives his command to depart and his men pull back into formation.

The man of the high priest who has been cut, who clutches a bloodied lump of his own cloak to the gash where once was an ear, says, ‘Wait!’ He lisps from the blood that has oozed into his mouth, ‘Aren’t you going to arrest him too?’ He points at Cephas.

The centurio laughs. He turns and laughs in the face of the bleeding man: ‘Our orders are to arrest the Nazarene Yahushua, this “dangerous revolutionary” here. And since we have done so, without injury to any of my men, we are now leaving with our prisoner. Should you wish to seize any of the others, I suggest you fucking do so. I obey your master only under the specific command of the prefect. I’ll obey a servant when the crows start shitting silver.’

And he spits then, at the bleeding servant of the high priest, who recoils from it, like a flinching child. And it’s clear that this priest-servant isn’t going to be seizing anything but his own wound. But Cephas stumbles up anyway and backs away, sword slowly waving like the head of a horned viper, and when none of the Temple Guards come at him he runs into the night. And all the other disciples turn their backs to Jerusalem and flee the other way, towards the hills and the safety of the scrub.

The Romans trudge, implacable, through the charred Kidron back to Jerusalem, Yeshua dragged by the Temple Guards at their tail.

Cephas stalks the flames of their torches at a distance.

The other disciples hide in the darkness, weeping at their failure, wondering who betrayed them. Not that a defector is necessary because previously they had gone out to the same place on the Mount of Olives, preparing for this night. And anyone could have followed them or informed on them. Even still, eventually a traitor must be chosen, a betrayer will be found. Literary completeness demands it.

‘We really should write to Philemon soon, Useful: your former master must be told where you are and what has happened so that he may forgive you.’ Paul shuffles on his chair, face cut in jagged squints, like a cracked tile, as he does so, his bad back clearly paining him.

‘Maybe what I have done is beyond forgiveness,’ Useful replies.

‘Nothing is beyond forgiveness. Didn’t I explain to you how Jesus has made himself a sacrifice for all the sins of the world? Any who believe in Him are now forgiven anything they have done. I add here that you must still try not to sin. That may sound obvious, but we had some problems with the community in Corinth on that score. I’m sure we’ll come to it presently in the story, but the idiots seemed to think that because all was forgiven they could do what they wanted. Orgies were going on, flesh writhing upon flesh, like serpents in a pit; drunkenness and debauchery became normality. They devoted themselves to pleasure. Many stopped working for a living, because they assumed the end time would arrive any day. The form of this world is indeed passing away, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t work in the meantime! Or ignore basic decency: one chap in Corinth married his mother! There was talk of doings so bestial that it would shame my lips even to mention them. The whole thing was a disaster. So now I always have to couch it in these terms: all your sins are forgiven, but you still shouldn’t sin.