Читать книгу The Robber - Bertram Brooker - Страница 7

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The late afternoon shadows of the hills and walls of the city stretched across the Kedron, to climb the Mount of Olives on the opposite side.

After his long dusty walk Barabbas felt refreshed by the cool air rising from the depths of the valley. The calm of early evening was settling down over the whole rounded brow of the Mount as though tender invisible hands had been laid on it in blessing.

Presently the robber of Bethabara caught a glimpse of the river, and thought with pleasure in his mind of the exhilarating feeling which awaited him when he dipped his feet into the shallow water. But he had forgotten that at the hours of sacrifice the blood sprinkled on the temple altars was drained into the tiny winding stream.

When he reached the bank he saw that the water was thick with a red scum, and the unexpected sight gave him a twinge of nausea. He had no vigour left for the precipitous climb to the Sheep Gate. Instead, he took the valley road toward the southern corner of the great wall, where an easier ascent would take him into the Lower City.

On his left a myrtle grove screened the sickening flow of blood-streaked water, but a familiar stench jolted his memory. He had reached a bend in the Kedron where the servants of the high priest washed the hides of the sheep and oxen slain each day for burnt offerings. When he came close enough to hear the splashing and the cries of the slaves he wanted to burst through the bushes and spring on the men, driving them away from the stream they were defiling with blood-sodden hides that would be sold to profit the priests. But instead he hurried past, his whole soul revolting against the tradition of a deity who desired the slitting of throats and the burning of carcasses.

His thoughts leapt forward to deeds that would lay waste the proud towers and palaces and disperse the priest-ridden people into green spaces where they might feel around them the presence of peace.

His weary shoulders drew back as he took a deep fierce breath. His hands clenched and his stride grew stronger, as though a draught of fiery wine had revived him.

A few paces brought him to the path which led upward to the Fountain Gate, set between two watch-towers. It was nearing the hour when the massive wooden gates would be closed. The crowds surging in and out were hurrying to get their beasts through in time, for at sundown only the "Needle's Eye" would remain open, a door too narrow for a camel or even a burdened ass.

On his left as he climbed lay the valley of Hinnom, a long ghoulish pit where infant sacrifices had been burned in ancient days on the altars of Moloch. Fires still blazed in this place of abomination, for it was here that the refuse of the city and the dead bodies of animals were brought to be buried.

The smoke hanging like a mist over the smouldering embers reminded Barabbas again of his youth and his slavery. Every day of his life at Meshech's house he had driven an ox-cart out of the Dung Gate with a load to be scattered on the foul heaps of cinders. He recalled how he had peered through the suffocating smoke at the caves of the lepers on the farther hill, and how at night his dreams had brought him echoings of their piteous cries: "Unclean! Unclean!"

Wrenching his glance away from the smoking valley, he pressed through the swarm of men and beasts shuttling through the gate. His heart seemed to be stifled with ugly memories.

Once inside the wall he hurried to the stone arcade surrounding the pool and fountain of Siloam. His thirst had become unbearable. Stepping over the legs of beggars sprawled beside the columns, he bent over the gushing water, letting it pour into his mouth and over his face and neck until he felt cool and clean.

He began the descent by familiar cross-streets into the steep ditch which ran from north to south through the heart of Jerusalem; another of those volcanic clefts wrought by ancient earthquakes. For centuries it had been called the Dung Valley, but the Greek-speaking Romans had given it the name Tyropoeon, the Valley of the Cheesemongers, for it was in the grassy stretches between cracked and tumbled rocks that they were permitted to graze their goats.

Narrow alleys, swarming with the poor of the city, ran down steeply into this ravine. Every few feet there were steps, and the squeezed houses were often buttressed across the slit of thoroughfare by arches which supported added rooms. Everywhere children and goats and ancient wrinkled crones squatted or romped among a litter of refuse.

Meshech's camel yard lay at the foot of one of these streets, immediately below the Alley of Spices, where Judas had lived with a widowed mother who sold doves in the temple courts. His father, Simon Iscariot, after serving for years as a gardener on a great estate in Arimathea, had set up as a spice-grinder in Jerusalem, but a fever had stricken the whole household soon after their arrival and Simon died. Judas hovered for a long time between life and death. His mother, Hezebel, threw off the sickness in a few days and nursed the others. She was the sort of woman the Romans called a virago; a female with the virility of a man. Her body was monstrously fat and her voice had grown harsh from shouting: "Buy my doves! Doves without blemish! Doves for the sacrifice!"

Barabbas recalled how he had mimicked her in secret, and also her aged father, who lived with them, a veteran of many battles. Old Jakim had lost one eye and walked unsteadily on a withered leg, injured in Herod's time.

The whole household rose clearly in Barabbas's mind as he approached the familiar corner—the old man limping along on his crutch or nodding in the doorway, the incessant cooing of the doves, the strident voice of Hezebel crying out from the dark interior, and Judas running like a rabbit when his name was blared above the noises of the alley.

A few paces more brought Barabbas within sight of the house. There was old Jakim squatting on the step with his crutch leaning behind him against the open door. His straggling wisp of beard had grown whiter. A drop of moisture from his sunken eye-socket lay in a furrow in his cheek. His skin was wizened into a myriad of tiny wrinkles, like a frozen apple.

Barabbas stopped in front of him.

"He will not remember me," he thought.

The old man did not raise his head. He was half asleep.

Somewhere nearby, an unpractised hand was plucking a sabbeka, and a sweet high voice floated over the twanging. Women were leaning out of the lattices of upper balconies, calling across to their neighbours. At a closed door a few paces away a child was whining and stamping his feet. The cries of an aged fish-seller, loitering homeward in the dusk, rang against the walls as he came down the steps.

Moving closer to Jakim, Barabbas said sharply: "Is this the house of Judas?"

The old man's head bobbed. His one eye opened. He stared and blinked.

"Sir," he said, stirring himself and reaching behind for his crutch, "this is the house of Jakim."

He hoisted himself upright and thrust out his chest. He was standing on the step, and did not seem to notice Barabbas's height.

"Jakim," he repeated. "Once a captain of archers. The king's archers. Here lives also my daughter, Hezebel, a seller of doves, and her son, Judas, by trade an apothecary."

"You have forgotten me," said Barabbas.

The old man peered into the bearded face of Barabbas.

"Yes, yes, yes! I know you," he muttered. There was a halt in his voice at times, and he had to click his few teeth together before he could go on. "You are the son of ... no!... I remember ... you were Meshech's slave. A tall boy ... but ... Jeshua!... that was your name. Yes. But you've been in battle yourself since then."

"My name was Jeshua, but now I call myself my father's son."

"Your father's son!" exclaimed Jakim. "We are all our father's sons. Why do you call yourself that?"

"Because my father was a rabbi who was hanged as a rebel, and I have become ..."

"Yes, yes, yes. I've forgotten ... where did your father fight?"

"He was not a fighting man. He was a rabbi who spoke against Archelaus."

"In what battle was he killed?"

"He was not killed in battle. He was hanged."

The old man gulped excitedly and wetted his lips. "It is a great time since I have seen a man hanged. In my youth I saw ten men hanged in the oak forest as you go toward Gath. I lost my eye there. An enemy drew his bow in a tree and the arrow put out my eye. I was a captain of mounted bowmen at the time, and Archelaus himself took me in his chariot and drove like Jehu ..."

"Archelaus?" cried Barabbas, smiling, for he had heard old Jakim's stories before. "Never in his life did Archelaus ride into battle."

"Who spoke of Archelaus? Did I? Did I say Archelaus? It was Achiabus, the king's cousin, who drove me out of the battle."

"Achiabus!" laughed Barabbas. "Achiabus fought against his cousin, desiring his crown."

"True! I was with him with the rebels. For all I know, my son, your father and I may have fought side by side. I seem to remember a man ... a rabbi ..."

But at that moment there was a hoarse shout from inside the house, and from the darkness over Jakim's shoulder appeared a man who, despite his apparent youth, was pitifully hunch-backed. There was a silence as the two men gazed searchingly at each other.

"Judas!" cried Barabbas, warmly.

"As my soul lives! It is you, Jeshua!" Judas thrust his familiar face out of the doorway into the fading light and stared closely at Barabbas with eyes that had been weakened by his childhood fever. Without a word they embraced. Then, stepping back, the misshapen man stared at the ash-coloured antelope skin.

"God of Sinai! You are magnificent!" he exclaimed. Although his throat sounded parched, tiny bubbles formed at the corners of his mouth when he talked. His pale eyes which Barabbas remembered as being quick to flinch with timidity, seemed larger, bolder, and in their speckled depths he seemed to sense a gleam of pride.

"I!" said Barabbas, and there was irony in his voice as he surveyed the other's carefully combed hair and the red beard curled and divided in the manner of the Greeks.

"It is you who are magnificent, Judas," he said, as his eyes wandered to the robe of fine white linen the other wore.

Judas did not seem to detect the ironic note in Barabbas's voice and he asked in compassionate anxiety, "Have you been in battle? You are scarred, Jeshua."

"I am a robber now. East of Jericho I am known as Barabbas. But here I doubt if they have heard of me."

"You!" Judas gasped, as though his breath had been driven out of him.

Judas sent a swift glance through the falling dusk. "Come in!" he whispered. "Come in at once!"

Barabbas allowed himself to be dragged by the arm into the house. It was dark inside and at first he could see nothing. The sweetish smell of spices made him twinge with repulsion.

"Ointments for women ... and the dead," he thought. "A trade for the timid."

Judas was standing close to him in the dark, so that Barabbas could feel the other's breath stirring the hairs of his beard.

"What do you fear?" he asked.

"The name Barabbas," said Judas.