Jonathan Trigell
The Tongues of Men or Angels
For the monkey who dances on the temple steps
If I speak with the tongues of men or angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
Are they servants of Christ? I speak as a fool. But I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea. I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false brothers. I have laboured and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked … I am not lying.
Of course, all vagrants think they’re on a quest. At least at first.
Four Days before the Crucifixion
If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.
That’s what Cephas’s father said one time, when a foreign-faced Roman legionary demanded directions. A wile as hoary as the hyena’s stripes: for the powerless to feign stupidity; to lull that they might deceive. Nonetheless, from here is where we must begin.
Cephas gazes down the Mount at Jerusalem, enthralled by its size. He’s a country boy, a country man, a hard man, grown in a hard land. Cephas isn’t his real name, it’s a nickname. It means ‘the rock’ or ‘rocky’, ‘stony’ maybe; a tough man’s name for a tough man. Cephas has a dense beard, matted and wired like the belly of a wild goat. His hair is knife-cropped against the heat, revealing folds of muscled neck. Skin baked dirt-brown from sun-blasted net-hauling. He was a fisherman once, an illiterate labourer, the sort of man irrelevant to the powers of this world. It is hard even to conceive of the ease and casual brutality with which people such as him can be disposed of, or the indifference with which they can disintegrate into dispossession and starve to death. Even so, only the very brave or the very dumb would fuck with Cephas one on one.
His unwashed feet are sandal-less and stiff with dust. His mutton-haunch right hand rests upon the cloth-taped handle of a cheap but sturdy sword, tucked unscabbarded into his belt. It is a belt much worn and much pierced; extra holes along its length betray times of relative plenty and times of near demise. He’s a big man — it takes a lot of food to keep a frame like that — but Cephas has known days of eating bitter unground corn, picked from the fields in which they hid. Picked even on the Sabbath, once, so desperate was their state and need. Cephas has known flights into the desert, and weeks holed up in the brush of maquis scrubland, periods when they envied the holes of foxes and the nests of birds. Cephas’s belly is fuller now: times have been better of late. Long may it last, though that lasting is in doubt.
Yeshua stares down at Jerusalem too. At the snaking walls of yellow limestone, mottled with grey like the camouflage of a horned viper, but too big to hide, cutting across the landscape like a leviathan. Visible even above those walls are the bulk of the Roman Antonia Fortress and the glory of the Second Temple — the Great Temple — not yet even fully finished, but already claiming the space between earth and heavens; making plain that only in Jerusalem can penances and sacrifices be made to God. Only in Jerusalem and only through blood.
Next to Cephas and Yeshua is James the Lesser, lean like a winter wolf. He is Yeshua’s brother. Second in line to the throne if — as they claim — the blood of royal David flowed through their father’s veins. But it is first-born Yeshua who will be king. And those who’ve met him would say that to be lesser than him is no sin, but only natural, inescapable, when Yeshua is a prophet and a prince.
‘What should we do now?’ Cephas asks James.
‘As planned,’ James the Lesser says, ‘as we must for Yeshua’s arrival to have impact. Word will spread about what has happened, if it’s done right. Send Judas the Twin and Thaddeus back to Bethpage. If Yeshua’s requests have been heeded, by now they’ll find a donkey colt tethered to a stone watering trough. The donkey will be young, but strong enough to ride. Tell them to lead it here. If anyone questions their taking it, they must say it is for their master, as agreed, and that it will be returned shortly. There shouldn’t be any problems.’
No, there shouldn’t be any problems, Cephas thinks, but there will be: there always are. And he can’t help noticing anew a marabou stork, which has trailed them at a distance all day. The stork hunches its bald pink head into the grey shawl of its feathers, like an eerie old man. From its throat dangles a purse flap of skin, like the goitres of the inbreds in the mountains. Does it use this skin to store food like the pelican or to roar like the bullfrog? It matters not: what bothers Cephas is that marabou storks feed on the dead and this one seems to think that carrion will come soon enough.
Few of Yeshua’s followers have farmland to tend. His strongest support comes from day labourers, beggars, boatless shore-fishermen, corn gleaners, ditch sleepers, tax absconders. Those who could leave their families have come with him now. The freedom of poverty. The bravery of desperation. The front runners have done their work well in gathering spectators. Only James the Lesser and the other eleven walk beside Yeshua, to represent the tribes of Israel; they will be his ministers, they will sit on twelve thrones. The rest throw their cloaks on the ground before the colt he rides. They run in front scattering brush they’ve cut. They skip and shout hosanna — ‘Save us, we beg you.’ They clap calloused hands and cry that revolution is coming. The streets are thronged with people anyway: pilgrims coming to Jerusalem for the Passover. The city will soon be swollen and bursting out, like an overfilled wine skin. A good number of the pilgrims join in with the cheering. The others stand and watch. Some smile, some laugh, some marvel. But all watch.
The crowds aren’t vast, not like some they have known in the past. Not like those the Baptizer used to pull in. Not like those who came to Yeshua at Bethsaida, after the Baptizer’s execution. But Cephas knows they’re not on home ground now. Galilee is many days’ walk behind them. That time is gone. But there are enough people here to start it. Enough to disperse the whispers. Something is happening: one who claims the line of David, a man who would be king, is come to Jerusalem.
Word has been spread among the poor and dispossessed of Jerusalem that something is to be expected. And there are many poor and dispossessed in Jerusalem. Giving alms in the Holy City is a doubly righteous act, so people who would have starved to death in the countryside can scrape an existence from the kindly guilt of pilgrims in Zion. Which is not to say that people don’t starve to death here too. There are too many dispossessed now for all to survive: property has been robbed from the peasant toiler. Laws created to protect them have been usurped. The Law of Moses says that land cannot be bought and sold, precisely to protect the lowly subsistence farmer. But Rome has no need of peasantry in its provinces: the Italian wolf gorges on extortion, tribute and taxes. Yeshua says he can change this. Yeshua says he will free Judaea from the Romans and the quisling collaborators of the Judaean aristocracy; that he can bring about a new kingdom. And who dares say he can’t, when Yeshua is a prince?