The Gospel of the Twin (3 page)

James and Jesus began to argue.

“This place is flooded with Gentiles,” said James. “How can we perform our ceremonies when they are on every corner? They defile the city.”

“How can a city be defiled by foreigners, Brother,” asked Jesus, “unless its own people welcome the defilement?”

James' eyes widened and his lips peeled back to show his clenched teeth. He looked like an angry dog about to bite. He had decided that Jerusalem was the true Israel, and I suppose he considered himself a specially adopted son.

“You sound like a Pharisee,” James said, batting Jesus' ear.

Joseph returned before James could strike me just for being nearby. “Enough,” Joseph said. “Have you forgotten where you are? This is not the place for your squabbles. We must go to the Sanctuary now.”

James and Jesus walked ahead, still bickering. The closer we got to the tallest building, the louder the throng around us buzzed, like flies on a dog's carcass. The people shifted among the booths, waving their hands and shaking their heads, much as I had seen fish buyers do by the water when we visited Bethsaida. I could not quite understand how the transactions worked, but Joseph pushed ahead to a table and appeared to know what he was doing.

“This is not what I expected,” I said to Jesus. “I thought this would be joyous or maybe solemn, not all this bickering and shoving and buying and selling.”

“Why would you expect anything else?” Jesus asked. “You don't think these people are here for God, do you?”

“Then why are they here?”

“To escape God. They know this is the last place He would be.”

I did not then understand what Jesus meant, and I am not sure that he himself did, but those words scratched my heart like an iron nail across a clay tile. The rest of the day, I walked softly and squinted into corners, peered through windows and, like a man who believes a thief lurks in his house, searched the holy place for a glimpse of God.

Joseph disappeared behind the booths and soon emerged carrying a bag. We bunched together and crossed the huge courtyard. I was amazed at the buildings and columns all polished and glistening in the bright Judean sun. Joseph gave us no time to wait for this feeling of awe to pass but pointed in the direction of the Women's Court and told Mother to take the girls there. He then took my brothers and me to the tallest building, the Temple Sanctuary itself.

When we arrived, the Sanctuary seemed to float upon a slab of marble at least five cubits thick. Lines of kneeling and mumbling men curved before its steps. We stepped around them and made our way into the Sanctuary and through to a room filled with men standing and rocking and praying. Their tongues sounded rather familiar—I suspect they were varied dialects of Hebrew and Aramaic.

Something was happening at the far end, but I could not see around the men in front of me. Joseph reached into the bag and removed two pigeons. Their soft heads stuck up between his scaly fingers—an unexpected image for me―I'd never seen something so rough touch any living thing with such tenderness. He stretched out his arm to a man in white with a tall hat who took the pigeons and gave them to another man, who placed them upon a long stone table.

There he and more men held them beside lambs and, with smooth, swift motions, wringed the birds' necks. They then took more of the birds and dispatched them with the same speed, ease, and detachment I had seen when Mother removed lentils from their hulls. These images grow dark to the mind of an old man, but the dying cries of those broken and knifed creatures will forever sound in my ears. I was at once fascinated by the efficiency of the process and repulsed by the massive slaughter demanded by our Lord (though I had many times witnessed sheep, cows, and goats killed in similar fashion). Why would the Almighty God require so much death? Was I to believe that we were actually feeding Him?

Amid the carnage, the thought emerged in my soul:
I am standing before the great altar, the destination for this sacred journey, and the closest I will ever get to God
. Was this the lesson I should take from the Temple, that the presence of God is accompanied by death? At the edge of my vision, I saw Joseph whisk Joses and Simon away, and I broke from my contemplation to follow them through a door into a courtyard.

Joseph seemed eager to get out quickly, and we left the Temple, my little brothers clinging to my hands among a flow of people, passed between more buildings and through a courtyard until we went through a gate decorated with peculiar symbols—serpents and rams and stars—and down stairs, after which we stopped beyond the outer wall. Hundreds of women and girls sat in the sun, waiting for their men and boys to emerge. I didn't know what they had done in their portion of the Temple complex, but I was happy that my sisters had been spared the bloody sights of the sanctuary. We walked among scores of scampering little girls until we found Mother waving for us.

Mother jumped to her feet and took my sisters by their hands. We left the Temple area together and were nearly back at the tents (where we were to cook our bread) when Mother halted, spun around, and strained her neck, searching. “Where is Jesus?” she asked, gasping and crossing her arms over her head. She must have thought him lost forever, for she collapsed to her knees and pressed her face to the ground, wailing like the old women at funerals. With her finger, she traced a circle in the dirt and pulled at my leg. I obediently drew a triangle inside the circle, then stomped in the center. Another of her superstitious rituals that I had participated in many times, this one was supposed to prevent an impending tragedy, which she foresaw with great frequency.

Joseph asked, “Where is James?”

“I shall find them,” I said, suspecting that Jesus had just tarried behind on his own as he sometimes did, and I didn't care where James was. I retraced our steps, expecting to find them not far behind us, but I had to go all the way back to the Temple, weaving through the women and girls outside, squeezing against the stream of bodies coming out the gate, and darting around the men exiting the altar room.

Inside, Jesus and James were speaking with four white-robed priests. One looked particularly old, and he placed his thin hand upon Jesus' shoulder, then turned to me. “Ah, you have a twin!” he said to Jesus. Looking to me again, he added, “Are you filled with the same ideas as this one?”

“Sir, I must take my brothers to our family,” I said.

“We must free ourselves from these troubles,” said Jesus, “or we shall have no families.”

“And how shall we become free?” another priest asked.

“Freedom is not found in this Temple,” Jesus said. “Too many among you act as if they belong to the Temple and not as if the Temple belongs to them.”

The man who held Jesus' shoulder smiled. “You are a clever and forthright boy, but you must be careful how you talk in the house of the Lord.”

“The Lord's house is much larger than this,” Jesus said. “It is where we dwell in emptiness—empty hearts, empty stomachs, empty pockets.” Two of the priests drew back their heads and pursed their lips as if they'd smelled something foul. Another's eyes narrowed and his head tilted as if doubting what he had heard.

The old priest jerked his hand from Jesus as if it had been burned. “Emptiness?”

“The Lord dwells here,” said James. “Torah says—”

The old priest reached out to place a skinny finger to James' lips. His eyes had not left Jesus' face. “Is this Temple empty?”

I saw James clench his fists, and I heard his teeth grind. Jesus was stealing all the priests' attention, and certainly not in a manner that would please James.

“Let's go,” I said, pulling my brothers away. Outside the gate, James ran ahead, probably so angry that he couldn't bear to look at Jesus. I was glad he left us, but I was surprised he hadn't first struck us both in the stomach.

“What were you doing in there?” I asked Jesus.

“I don't know. I felt compelled to talk to them. Who knows when I'll have another chance like that?”

“You were making them angry.”

“Thomas, why would they think they have anything to fear from me?”

We found our family back at the tents. Mother threw her arms around Jesus and sobbed. James joined us more than an hour later. I saw him approaching before the others did, and I tried to make him feel bad.

“Mother was worried about you,” I said. “The whole family was.”

“Your mother,” he said. “Your family. You should all tend to yourselves.” He shoved me aside. As he walked past, I stumbled to the ground, and threw a pebble that hit his back, but he didn't acknowledge it.

I was sleepless that night. I wasn't sure exactly why I felt so disturbed. Perhaps I was just overwhelmed by the size of the crowds. Perhaps it was being among so many Romans and afraid that at any moment I might be the recipient of a random blow from a soldier's lance. Maybe the inscrutable Temple rituals seemed to me like just so many empty words and meaningless, yet no less powerful, operations.

On the journey home the next day, I tried to make sense of it all in my child's mind and was vowing to myself that I would never return to this city when my mother took me aside and asked me why Jesus had lingered inside the Temple. I told her what I'd heard him say.

“You are a gentle boy, Thomas, and so is Jesus, but he's strong-spirited and doesn't understand the ways of the world. You are more worldly than he. He needs you to care for him. Can you do this for me?”

“My brother is a riddle to me, Mother, and I sometimes think he has no concern for the ways of the world. He is as dear to me as my own breath, but how shall I care for him when I cannot understand him?”

“People don't want to think about things as he does. Jesus doesn't see that. His talk with the priests at the Temple—he could get into trouble for saying things like that. Keep him safe, Thomas.”

“I shall, Mother.” In the ignorance of my youth, I was sure I could protect him. Yet how could I have foreseen the horror toward which he projected himself? Even knowing all I do now, could I have done any better?

So many nights I have lain awake and cursed myself for not seeking some way to silence him instead of supporting his insane vision. Was I mad too? Is this relentless questioning my punishment for failing to keep my promise to my mother?

Chapter Four

Verse One

My memories seem clearer the farther back I look into my youth. From my childhood, I see the weathered faces, hear the sharp whacks of mallets and dull drags of saws, and feel the weight of Roman occupation like a centurion's sandal upon the neck. In images from more recent years, faces are less distinguishable, and sounds are smoothed to murmurs, but the foot of the Empire is no less heavy.

Perhaps the pall of despair fostered our mischief. Judas was usually the instigator. We were probably still about twelve when he talked Jesus and me into trying to peek in on the women's bath. As Galileans, some did not comply with all the purity rituals, but most of the women still spent their unclean times of the month at the bath away from their families. “They take off all their clothes when they enter,” Judas said. “We can watch from inside Bazak's shed.”

The shed smelled as if Bazak had not cleaned out the sheep dung for months, but it would be a small price to pay if the scheme paid off. We peered through the slats that formed the back of the shed. The bath looked like a small house with a rounded roof, as if it were meant to resemble a cave. It was made mostly of mud and reeds, like material for roofs, and was at the edge of one of the springs where the Nazarene women washed clothes. A ditch had been dug into which spring water flowed where the women sat. A couple of old women came and went carrying jars that probably contained food for the women inside.

“This is silly,” Jesus said. “We can't see inside, and no woman is going to undress on the outside.”

“Leave if you like,” I said. “I'm staying.”

Jesus lay back and napped while Judas and I took turns keeping watch. After about an hour, I sat leaning against the shed when Judas nudged me. “Someone's here.”

I spun around and looked through the slats. Two women stood at the bath entrance with their backs to us. They wore sheer, white gowns. One of the old women emerged and spoke to them. The two women dropped their gowns around their ankles.

The loose, peasant garments Nazarene women wore gave me no hint that such astonishing contours lay beneath. Their backs, cleft by the gentle crease of their backbones, sloped down to narrow waists. Their bottoms mounded like bread loaves. I had seen boys' bottoms when we swam or bathed together, but the women's bottoms were rounder, curving outward and under, and were as firm as pomegranates. I felt a stir in my loins, as if I had to piss. I thought about waking Jesus but couldn't bring myself to break my gaze.

As she turned to speak to the taller one, I saw the shorter woman's face. Leah!

“Damn me!” I said. Judas clasped his hand over my mouth.

Jesus awoke. “What?”

“Shhh!” Judas said.

Leah and the other woman, whom I think was her friend Rebekah, entered the bath, out of sight.

“Who were they?” Judas asked.

“I don't know,” I said. “Let's go.” I ran home, delighted yet embarrassed. I had thought of Leah as a mere girl, not yet ready to join the company of women.

After all, I was still a boy.

Verse Two

When Jesus and I were sixteen or seventeen years old, James courted a beautiful and kind girl named Sarah. I was baffled that any girl would spend a minute with such a bore, but as he sat on the floor and rocked and recited scripture, she would stare silently at him for hours, as if he were a charmed snake. Like her parents and a few other Nazarenes, she was oblivious to the political war happening around them. She did not even know that her brother Nathan, who, like James, was eighteen or nineteen, ran with bandits who attacked wealthy Judeans as they passed through the wilderness.

According to Judas, Nathan was a member of the Zealots, a rather widespread faction more organized than the nameless, rural insurrectionist bandits. The Zealots had begun an open rebellion against the Romans about ten years earlier after a census resulted in increased taxation. They soon switched to more covert tactics, often forming alliances with bandit groups to launch stealth attacks upon soldiers and travelers.

The Zealots and bandits were encouraged by many of our people, but some accused them of being more interested in robbing the rich than in liberating any of us. Others believed their activities only aggravated the Romans in the region. Soldiers rounded up and executed accused bandits every day, often killing them on the spot instead of first arresting them and taking them before a government official. Some of our people feared that the Romans would soon tire of these amateur assailants, who did occasionally succeed in killing a soldier, and wage a large-scale sweep of our entire land, killing all men who appeared to have the minimum strength to lift a sword against them. When we were younger, Jesus, Judas, I, and a few of the other Nazarene boys our age would pretend to be Zealots, dark heroes fighting for our country and our Lord, and we'd run about the village with wooden swords Jesus and I had made, slashing at imaginary legions.

One day, Nathan and his fellow brigands, full of wine and themselves, attacked a detachment of Roman soldiers. Nathan was carried into town on a plank with a sword wound in the chest—or maybe his stomach―but either way, I had never seen so much blood, even when a sheep was killed. He had shat on himself, and I wondered how much of the stench came from the shit and how much from the bile and blood.

Most of the village gathered to watch him quiver. He looked as if he were freezing, his face white and gnarled like curdled milk. Sarah and her mother knelt in dirt beside him and wailed. James took Sarah by the shoulders, but she slapped him away. Nathan's incessant screams finally reduced to moans after what must have been an hour, and I hoped he had gained enough control over the pain that we had seen the worst of it. Jesus and I were among the first at the scene and so were standing beside Nathan when he held out a dagger and said, “Take this. It cannot serve me now.”

Jesus raised the knife before his face and squinted as if trying to read an inscription on the blade. He hefted it a couple of times as you might test the weight of a hammer. “Did it serve you before?” he asked.

“I shall make it serve us,” said Judas as he sprang forward and snatched the dagger from Jesus. Judas had just returned from the fields tending his father's sheep, and he was wild-eyed and jumpy, probably as horrified as I to see a young man in such terrifying agony, or maybe he was actually excited to see the bloody result of the battles he'd fantasized about.

Nathan's mother cradled her son's head and wept the entire time, unable to utter a word. At last she begged, “Can anyone help him?”

Jesus was the only one in the crowd who appeared undisturbed, and he answered Nathan's mother, “Perhaps the Romans have already done that.”

Shocked, I said, “Brother! Nathan may be dying, and you're talking like a smug sage.”

“We're all better dead than living under Roman heels,” said Judas.

“There are many ways to live,” said Jesus, “even under the Romans. There is the life of the slave, the life of the collaborator, and the life of the bandit, but they are also the ways of death. We must seek a new way.”

“What would that be?” I asked. “Should we retreat to the desert like the Pure Ones?”

“No,” said Jesus. “Even they have chosen a slave's life.”

I felt something hit the top of my foot. I looked down to see a red spot. Another drop of blood fell from Jesus' fingertips. His hand must have been cut when Judas snatched the dagger from him.

Nathan gave a final gasp, shuddered, and died. Sarah sobbed into James' shoulder. “Sarah, we must take him inside the house now to be prepared for burial,” James said.

Jesus whispered to me, “Do you hear our brother, Thomas? He speaks of caring for the dead while he knows nothing of the living.”

“And what is it that you know?” I asked. I had never watched someone die. Despite his foolishness, Nathan had been a brave young man, hardened beyond his years and the best wrestler in Nazareth; yet one deft stroke of a blade from an unjust hand had shown me how futile these bandit efforts were.

Leah appeared at Sarah's side and knelt in the pool of blood. Perhaps she had been nearby all along, and I hadn't noticed. I remembered that she was Sarah's and Nathan's cousin. Sarah turned from James and leaned into Leah's embrace. The two of them cried together while Nathan's mother stroked his lips as if trying to entice a breath. I felt enormous grief for him and for his family, for our people, and for the generations that might never trod this land. The terrifying prospect that any and all of my people's assaults against the Romans were as doomed as Nathan's slapped me in the face, and I could not understand why this had not occurred to Jesus as well.

A few cubits from us, Judas sank to his knees and vomited.

I grasped Jesus' shoulders and drew him close to me. “You do not have a new way. No one does. But something must be done—maybe not Nathan's way, but at least he tried something. How many more Nathans will die while you spout proverbs? If you devise a plan, I'll follow you. But now is not the time for empty talk.”

Jesus tightened his face in confusion and placed his hand upon my lips as if examining the strange source of my sharp words. I knew even then that a plan was taking form in his mind, a plan that Jesus himself would never fully understand. I knew even then that I had been wrong. His talk was anything but empty.

“Thomas,” Leah said. “Help us.”

James was holding Nathan under his arms. I took the body by the ankles, and we carried it into the house where Sarah and her mother lived. Sarah and her mother spread a sheet upon the table, and we laid the body on top. Leah, her mother, and grandmother entered to help with the preparations. The women, now calm, began to undress Nathan with the same disinterest they might show at a loom.

Leah noticed me lingering and came to me. “Thank you, Thomas.” She touched my cheek, and my face went numb as if from a bee sting. I imagined her naked, and I longed for her arms around my back, and my lips at her throat. I trembled but did not feel guilty for the impure thoughts. Did she have any idea what I was thinking? She nudged my chest with both hands. “You must go now, Thomas.” I backed out, my eyes locked onto hers, and left James inside.

The street had cleared except for a clutch of five or six men staring at the dirt while shaking their heads and clucking their tongues. I saw Judas down the street walking towards home. Jesus stood alone, watching me approach.

When I got to him, he kissed my cheek. “You are right,” he said. “Now follow me, Brother. Home.”

We had grown up in a climate of fear, having heard countless stories of Roman cruelty. We had seen our people humiliated by the soldiers in Jerusalem. On that day, though, we witnessed the bloody, vivid horror of occupation. Jesus and I walked home in silence, one of many times in which words would have been crude.