I have been counting on thousands of our supporters to have assembled at Golgotha, but, from a distance of a quarter of a mile, I already see that less than a hundred friends and concerned followers are there. Where are the throngs who cheered for Yeshua and called him our king as he entered Yerushalayim?
A prisoner already hangs on a cross, but I cannot make out his face. His screams reach me as I rush on. God forgive me, it is relief – and not horror – that makes me shiver, for his accent is unmistakably Judaean.
Although he is still only a tiny letter tau on the horizon, a favourable wind soon brings me the condemned man’s appeals for the Lord’s gevurah and din – divine judgement and justice. Over and over he cries out a verse from the prophet Jeremiah: ‘“Lord Almighty, you who examine the righteous and probe the heart and mind, let me see your vengeance on them, for to you I have committed my cause.”’
His repetition of this verse becomes chant-like in its fervour, which gives me the idea that he is searching for a gateway out of the prison of his flesh. Yet vultures wheel through the leaden sky above him, waiting for the inviting silence that will come when he can speak no more.
After another fifty paces, my name is called. I turn to see Mia running towards me, her face flushed and bloated by tears. ‘I was sure you’d been arrested, too!’ she calls ahead.
I have not forgotten that she betrayed us to Caiaphas, but the little brother inside me apparently knows nothing of that, for he cries out her name as if she alone can change the direction of our destiny.
Mia stops two paces from me, afraid to come any closer. Does she see in my eyes that I am aware of her treason? ‘I know,’ I tell her, and, when she reaches out with beseeching hands, I add, ‘No, only Yeshua can forgive you now.’
She raises her hands to her face and begins to wail.
In my dreams of that day, I often see the two of us backed by the hushed, reddened sky of a battle that has been lost in both the Throne World and Zion.
‘Why did you go to Annas?’ I ask.
‘To protect our family,’ she says with a moan.
‘Protect us? Are you mad? Didn’t you think I’d do everything to protect us? I even spoke to you of leaving for Alexandria!’
‘The day you threatened Cousin Hannah … I could see you’d lost control of yourself. You were so … strange. And so angry. All of us could see you’d become someone else.’
I understand then that it had been fatal mistake to allow myself to express my true feelings – even in front of my own sister.
‘Marta went alone to Annas,’ Mia continues, ‘but he insisted that both of us come to see him to plead for mercy or he would hurt you and your children.’
Now that I’ve ceased making excuses for Marta, I see the strategy she employed. ‘Did Annas really say that, or is that just what Marta told you?’
‘You think she lied to me? But if she did …’ Mia turns away in horror, considering this revelation.
‘Don’t you see – Marta wanted you to betray me,’ I exclaim. ‘It was her way of destroying us. She must have known that Yeshua had spies watching the priest’s house. She knew I’d find out that you’d gone to Annas.’ I laugh bitterly. ‘She’s brilliant, and she’s fooled the two of us yet again – and this time Yeshua is paying the price.’
A secret terror snakes through me as Mia acknowledges that I may have uncovered the truth: Might Marta have been working with Yehudah of Kerioth for many weeks?
I turn to leave because the crucified man is still screaming his prayer for vengeance, and his words tell me I have wasted too much time conversing with a woman who did not trust me enough to come to me with her misgivings.
‘Annas promised me that he would not hurt you or your children or Yeshua!’ my sister calls out as I start away. ‘He swore it to me!’
If she comes after me, there is still a chance for us, I think. And if not …
‘I know that what I did was unforgiveable,’ she says with a groan. ‘I’m sorry, Eli.’
She entreats me in a raw and desolate voice to stop, but I do not, and each step away from her is easier than the one before, and her voice is fading, and it will soon be gone. Something beyond the rage in me – something inseparable from our childhood – then turns me around. ‘You should have spoken to me before seeing him!’ I cry.
Mia runs to me. ‘Eli, ever since your resurrection you’ve seemed a stranger to me.’
Do I take her back into my life? Even now, after decades of living with the memory, I do not know why I made the choice I did.
‘Mia, there’s no time for this,’ I tell her, taking her hand and gripping it tightly. ‘We can speak of the two of us later, but Yeshua is all that matters to me now.’
I already know, however, that I am lying: I shall never again talk of her betrayal of Yeshua. For if he lives there will be no need, and if he dies I shall never speak of this day to her or anyone else.
The pains shooting up in my hip force me to climb up the slope to Golgotha bent over, as though I were sowing this barren, miserable landscape with my panting breaths. Gusts of wind blow dust into my eyes and mouth, and, while I clear my throat, a small, frightful woman asks if I am the man whom Yeshua raised from the dead.
‘I cannot help you – there’s no time!’ I say, pushing her way.
As I climb, my sister offers to help, but I must go these last steps alone, since the Lord may need proof that my own well-being and safety no longer mean anything to me. She reaches the top before I do. I see her pick a wild red poppy that’s managed to poke its way out of the inhospitable soil. I expect her to hand it to me as a symbol of hope, but instead she crushes it between her thumb and forefinger.
It’s not fair for there to be such beauty in his accursed place, her embittered expression tells me.
A small assemblage of men and women has gathered around the crucified man. Two additional uprights have been planted in the dry ground but have yet to receive their crossbeams, which means that three prisoners are to meet the Angel of Death today.
I call upon Hananiah, Mischael and Azariah to intercede on their behalf, for those three righteous young men were condemned to death by Nebuchadnezzar but were saved by an angel of the Lord.
I call on them three times in my mind and once more aloud.
Twenty Roman soldiers guard this benighted place. Four are on horseback. If any of our old friends tried to stall them, they obviously failed.
I see now that the man already hanging from his cross is small and muscular, with stiff black hair and a thick shadow of beard on his cheeks. A wooden sign has been posted at the top of his cross: Lestes. Rebel.
Fight Rome and you will die in agony! That is what the sign means in the language of tyranny.
The crucified man struggles at the ropes that bind his wrists to his crossbeam, cursing the Romans. The tendons on his neck stand out, and his grimace – defiant, savage, murderous – tells me that he is a man of uncommon strength, which is a misfortune under the circumstances, since it will take him a very long time to render his soul to God.
His thick, powerful wrists have been bound so cruelly that his hands have become limp and white. I can no longer sense my fingers, he must have already admitted to himself, and he has undoubtedly come to suspect by now that a crucified man vanishes from the outside in. Soon my legs and arms will go numb as well, and then …
His feet are so dark with filth that they look like roots just pulled from the soil.
Why do I notice all these trifles about him when here on the same hill must be the man with whom I have lived on an island in my mind since I was eight years old?
The spirit of a man who senses ruin and madness will sometimes flee into extraneous details. It is the only explanation.
Maryam of Magdala has kneeled by the upright furthest from us, her hands clamped over her mouth. She is surrounded by onlookers I do not recognize.
Two additional vultures now circle through the grey sky above us, making nine in total. Does this loathsome place rise up in all its foul-smelling, desolate glory at the centre of all their most nourishing dreams?
As we rush to the back upright where Yeshua must be, my sister and I pass by the central cross. The prisoner there is lying on his back with blood smeared across his face. He is elderly and bald. His lips are sealed tight. His eyes are open but not gazing at anything in our world.
I shall not beg, his expression tells me. And I shall not give them any information they may want. Since the age of eleven, when my parents were both killed, I have made my own decisions, and I am fifty-seven years old now, and I chose the life of a rebel willingly, and I rejoiced each time I covered myself with the blood of a Roman, and I pray that I may meet death like a man.
His executioner tightens the bindings on his wrists. The man has quick, decisive, skilful hands; he has probably made a good life for himself tying thick knots around the hands of Jews.
My son appears from out of nowhere and hugs his arms around me. His chin is soiled, but it is the bruising in his eyes that worries me. No one who is thirteen years old is ready for what he has seen.
‘Are you hurt?’ Mia asks him while I search desperately over his face and chest and arms for wounds.
‘I’m all right,’ he tells us.
‘Paullus has agreed to help us,’ I tell him, hoping to renew his strength. ‘He’s on his way now to Herod’s Palace.’
‘Then there’s still a chance?’ Yirmi says.
‘Yes. What about you?’ I ask him. ‘Did you find any of our old friends?’
‘I found Maryam of Magdala and Yeshua’s mother. They’re over there,’ he says, pointing to the last upright. ‘I spoke to them, and I told them to do anything they could to stall the Romans, and they tried, but –’
‘And Yeshua?’ I cut in.
Yirmi’s eyes gush with tears, and that is when I start to run.