The Penitent - An Easter Story

"Remember me when you come into your kingdom."

 

IT WAS so hard to watch, but I did not turn away.

 

I wanted to share these last moments with him – the man I loved – no matter how painful.

 

So I kept my ears and my eyes open –– even though they were filled with horrors.

 

I saw them drive the nails into his wrists. Heard him scream. Watched, as they hauled his cross into position.

 

I missed nothing.

 

Everyone told me I was a fool to love him.

 

“Don’t you know what he does?” They scolded. “Don’t you know how badly the authorities want to get their hands on him?”

 

My women friends shook their heads, clucked their tongues.

 

“He’s a vagabond!”, they’d say. “A criminal! There’s no future for you there. Why don’t you find yourself a decent man, a steady man? Someone from a good family. The longer you stay with him, the harder it will be for you to put your life back together when it all goes wrong – and be warned, woman, it will go wrong!”

 

And, they were right. It did go wrong. Horribly wrong.

 

I told him over and over again: don’t go into Jerusalem at Passover. There are too many unfamiliar faces; too many eyes; too many soldiers. But he would go.

 

“Pass up an opportunity like this?’, he laughed, holding me at arm’s length, looking into my eyes. “Not likely!”

 

And, he went.

 

It’s grown cold on this hill-top. The sun’s disappeared and the wind is rising. Two more crosses have gone up. Two more tortured bodies. Two more screaming mouths. I don’t recognise the man in the middle, but the other is Dumachus.

 

Him I know.

 

He is a bad bastard. Cruel. Violent.

 

“Dead men tell no tales!”

 

That was Dumachus’s motto. Out there on the desert road. The robbed and beaten travellers begging for mercy through broken teeth. Mercy? Hah! Dumachus had none.

 

My man tried to save them. He pleaded for their lives. Dumachus just laughed. He enjoyed killing – it gave him pleasure.

 

Listen to him now! Taunting the stranger.

 

“Hey, Rabbi! They say you’re the Messiah. God’s son! So how about giving us a bit of help? Come on, get us down from here. Save yourself. And if you can’t do that then, Hell! At least save me and my friend!”

 

Messiah? Son of God? What in Heaven’s name is Dumachus talking about?

 

I squint against the darkening sky. The soldiers have nailed some sort of notice above the stranger’s head, and – Oh Dear Lord! I thought it was his hair – but it’s a woven circlet of thorns. The soldiers have pushed it over his forehead like a crown. The blood has flowed down, covering his eyes.

 

His eyes.

 

My man, Dismas, is speaking into the wind.

 

“Shut your mouth, Dumachus! Show some respect. You know how we got here – and why. You killed all those people for no good reason – and I, God forgive me, I didn’t stop you. What they’ve done to us here is no more than we deserve. But this man: this man has done nothing. Nothing that warrants this. Leave him be!”

 

The stranger inclines his head towards Dismas, and smiles.

 

I can read what the soldiers have written now. “Jesus of Nazareth. King of the Jews”

 

Dismas is speaking again. Speaking to this Jesus.

 

“Remember me,” he’s saying, “when you come into your kingdom.”

 

Those eyes, again. Staring out through the blood and suffering of our broken world. No pain in them, no anger. Just a gaze of boundless forgiveness and infinite love.

 

“It will be so”, he says, so softly I can hardly hear him. “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 

Dismas nods weakly. Tries to smile. There’s no more strength in his arms.

 

I cannot bear this. I cannot.

 

But Dismas is looking down at me. He’s struggling to speak.

 

“Did you hear that, my love?”, he gasps through gritted teeth, fighting now for every breath.

 

“In Paradise.”

 

This essay was originally published in The Otago Daily Times of Thursday, 28 March 2013.

Forlorn Embassy (An Easter Story)

"Suffered under Pontius Pilate."

"MORE WINE! Oi – you there – another jug of the same for me and my stiff-necked friend!"

Pontius Pilate might have aged, but he’d lost none of the habits of command. The relentless passage of the years might have bent his back, but his eyes still glowed with the same fire they glowed with thirty-five years ago when the Emperor Tiberius’s treacherous Praetorian, Sejanus, made him Governor of Judea.

Tiberius. How long ago that all seems now. The faces on Rome’s coins have changed three times since then: Caligula, Claudius and now, Nero – the Emperor my countrymen have sent me to see.

"A forlorn embassy!"

Pilate had thrown back his head and laughed when I had tried to explain what I, Yosef Ben Matityahu, was doing in Rome.

"Asking clemency from that simpering boy? That glittering peacock? That pretentious, poetry-spouting pederast? You might as well ask for clemency from a scorpion. Your priests will never see Jerusalem again, Yosef Ben Matityahu. You have been sent on a fool’s errand. Nero’s heart is not the melting kind."

"A man after your own heart, then, Pontius Pilate."

This was a risky gambit, and I knew it. The old man in front of me had been recalled to Rome in disgrace after massacring hundreds of Samaritans at Mt Gerizim. Had Tiberius not died while Pilate was on his way back to Rome, who knows what would have become of him.

"Oh, you stiff-necked Jews! You never forget, and you never forgive!" Pilate lurched forward, spilling what was left in the wine jug, and seizing me by the collar of my tunic. The smell of sour wine on his breath made me retch, but he pulled me closer still.

"Your pride will be the death of you", he whispered. " Pride – and that habit you have of hearing the voice of God in every dust-devil that blows out of the desert."

"Not recently", I countered, trying not to look away from the fierce old Roman’s imperious gaze. "You’re thinking of Moses and the whirlwind."

"The Hell I am!" Pilate shouted, pushing me back into my seat, and calling for more wine. "What was the name of that madman who set up shop on the banks of Jordan? The one who tried to drown his followers? Reckoned he had been sent by God to prepare the way for the prophesied Jewish King. Bad move. My old friend Herod Agrippa had his heart set on that particular job. He had the fool’s head cut off.

"Dammit, what was his name?"

"John," I said softly, "his name was John."

"Yes, that’s right, John." Pilate leaned back in his chair and bit off a mouthful of the bread he’d been using to soak up the spilled wine.

"John … Yes, but he was weak beer compared to the other fellow: the one who turned up a few years before I was recalled by that imbecilic old paedophile, Tiberius. Curious fellow. Never met anyone quite like him. Jesus."

For a moment he seemed lost in thought until, once again, he lurched forward, stabbing me in the chest with an arthritic finger.

"Your lot hated him. Couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. I’ll never forget the night that Caiaphas, the High Priest – wild-eyed and his robe in tatters – came banging on my door.

"‘The blaspheming rogue claims to be the Messiah!’ Caiaphas cried, ‘Jesus must die!’

"Damned odd business. I’d sentenced scores of Jews to death in my time - crucified them without a second thought.

"But not this fellow. It was uncanny. In the midst of all that shouting and bloodlust – and it was his blood they were lusting for, Josephus – he actually smiled at me.

"I asked him straight out: ‘Are you the prophesied Jewish King – the Messiah?’ And do you know what he said? I’ve never forgotten. He said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’

"My kingdom is not of this world! What’s that supposed to mean? Kingdoms are always and only of this world. Why else are you here in Rome, Yosef Ben Matityahu? Why else have you come to me for help?"

"What did you do?" I asked, reaching for the jug.

Pilate shuddered, spilling more wine on the table. His crimson-stained fingers trembled as he spoke.

"To keep the peace, I crucified him."

This short story was first published in The Otago Daily Times of Thursday, 1 April 2010.