Chapter 38 - The last night

As we entered Jerusalem, only then did I understand how I had erred in rejecting Caiaphas' proposal. The day before, protests and disturbances had broken out, organized by the Sikarians and ruthlessly put down by order of the prefect; his legionaries had killed several dozen disgruntled

or imprisoned. The sanhedrin took the opportunity to show its single-mindedness and called for the death penalty to be handed out to those who, in the opinion of its members, posed a threat to the spiritual authorities: the freewheeling prophets, healers and scholars. Even soothsayers and innocent dream interpreters fell under the knot of the law enforcers. Warriors of Judea caught the latter along with Roman legionnaires and dried and over to the petty court that quickly concocted one death sentence after another. Mistakenly, even some pilgrims from the countryside, who had been all too talkative, were rounded up and put to death.

Among the unfortunates was also a single Jesus of Nazareth who revealed his true name under torture. In addition, a woman named Mary had turned up in the city who pretended to be the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, and she was only not apprehended, because this kind of madness was considered comical and not a danger to those in power. She became so much like an immaculate and beneficent Isis and gathered around her women who blindly believed her, even from distinguished relatives. Judging from the description, this was my mother. Seeing her then was the last thing I wanted, though. I think the feeling would be mutual.

There was no question of preaching somewhere in a crowded place. The wine fumes had faded and I fell prey to a torturous fear. We had to find somewhere good to go, come to rest in Jerusalem and leave as soon as possible. In the western part of the city, mattheus led us to a house where a hospitable merchant lived, the owner of a number of stores selling salt, crockery, jewelry boxes, knives and all manner of small items, indispensable in daily life. He was a tall, wrinkled gray-haired man with two colors of eyes, one green and one blue. I had met such people before, but it amazed me that he had pupils of different sizes, as if one looked into the light and the other peered into the dark. The old man lives with his young, taciturn Syrian wife, a voluptuous girl with a lush curly forest and a face as good as it is silly.

It was the last evening we were all together. We sat on cushions and reed mats at a long, low table of brightly painted wood. The practitioner's wife, with the help of a maidservant, had prepared us a simple meal.

We drank a lot of wine, and I fell prey to bad premonitions. My students were also in a minor mood, only our wives chatting carefree with the merchant's wife.

"How are things going?" I asked the old man out of politeness.

'Well, Jesus, yesterday I bought from nomads very cheaply a batch of palm-fiber woven baskets and sold them for double,' he replied.

'To avoid falling into the clutches of the sanhedrin, we must be too cunning for them: we all take a rope and we hang ourselves,' Simon spoke, breathing a sigh. Laughter sounded in unison.

Only in Matthew's case did not a smile come off, he had his parchments, his papyrus and his dead ordinary pieces of rough leather spread out on the table, made some corrections to them tenderly writing out something in the net muttering to himself.

'Mattheus, stop that,' I said, 'drink your wine, sink your teeth into a flatbread with oil and look at me, I am your teacher, and around you are your friends. Our business is in bad shape, and we know you will never see me again.'

Matthew reluctantly detached himself from his writing and said, "Jesus, it doesn't matter what happens to us next, because I am writing the book in which we will stand before the face of eternity, and I am finishing that text as it pleases me. Forgive me, Master, but the nagids were right when they said that you no longer belong to yourself. You belong to history, and I know what I am doing.'

'Matthew!" I exclaimed, slapping the table with my flat hand; everyone was silent. 'Who Dean you? Not God, not the emperor, not me. You think your zajk with written texts! That's your unfeeling leather god! The moths in time will eat him! You are mad! Look at me, at Judas, at Simon... Look, we...'

Matthew let an otherworldly gaze pass over everyone and delved back into his work.

I understood the futility of talking to him, poured myself a cup of sweet, strained wine and clocked it away in one sitting.

'Will you stop talking like that,' Magdalena said. 'Shall the girls and I make you merry? Mr. Owner, do you have a tambourine and a cymbal? Do you have a tympanum? Then give those soon!'

The women set into a joyful song, Magdalene threw off her clothes and exposed her tawny body, causing great confusion to the owner's wife, and plunged into a furious dance. Magdalena threw off her clothes and exposed her tawny body, causing great confusion to the owner's wife, and plunged into a furious dance. Magdalena threw her head into her neck, languidly closed her eyes and struck the tambourine, shaking in tune with her pronged breasts with the big brown stars of nipples, and Terpsischore would have been jealous of her neighbor's grace. As I watched her, I became aroused. The black triangle of close hair under her belly set me on fire as of old.

We drank more, but no one got drunk, the volcanic power of the wine emanating from the earth no longer having any effect on us, as if by the will of a hopeless scribe we had become a twisted copy of ourselves. But no, no, I knew they existed, and each of us was a pulsating red book of flesh, fortified by white bones, and that flesh had to be redeemed.

'Listen, dear people,' I said, 'if we all went out of town together, we would irrevocably attract attention and be arrested. Therefore, early tomorrow, in the hour between sleeping and waking, you must leave this house one by one, walking in different directions in the city via different rungs. I will go first. We will meet again in the valley of Gethsemane, in the olive garden, where it is usually deserted and there is an abandoned house where we can hide from prying eyes. Then we dissolve into the crowds on the road to Jericho and go to Galilee, hide temporarily in the mountains of the north, then move to Damascus, via Iturea, I think tetrarch Herod Philippus bell has something else on his mind than the manhunt for prophets. I have a good friend in Damascus, we will get shelter there, and even though it will be a new place for us, don't worry, I know what to do.

My words received a lukewarm reception from my students, but no one went against the plan. They remained seated at the table, with the gentleman of the house with the two-colored eyes, but I walked to our assigned room, a long pipe-drawer, like the coffin of a refrain, to go to bed a little early. We had a difficult day ahead of us.

Magdalena came up behind me, walked to the wall of the room, pressed herself against it with her palms and offered me her behind. Her movements were light and harmonious, as always. I forcefully chased my zajien in, moved and poured my seed into her wide, hot womb, and without a word Magdalena went back to drinking.

With a blade of obsidian, I shaved off my long beard, turned off the lamp, set it on a protruding stone in the wall and lay down on the wicker mats, under a sheepskin that lay nearby. It made me sad. I had told everyone for so long that I knew the way to eternal life, but did it really exist? Was it even there? I concluded: if I make it out alive, I will leave for the north and never take another step toward Jerusalem. I have played enough with that fire. I'll take another name, become a silent physician. And maybe I can get the Roman citizenship bell, to start a new life, with a clean slate; after all, I'm not an old man yet and I can still be of service to the empire.

Judas stepped into the room and silently lay down beside me. As I fell asleep, I was suddenly acutely aware of the danger that threatened me, for I could be captured and put to death. I thought about how nice it would be to become a bird to leave Jerusalem undetected, but only a clearly large mag was able to do that.