THE PASSION OF JUDAS
In Gethsemane, beneath the gibbous moon, Jesus and his disciples felt themselves lost within the dolorous trees and no longer heard the metal pursuit of the Romans, or the black cloaks of the Sanhedrin, or the rage of the Pharisees, or the tumult of the multitudes whom Jesus observed from his new aristocracy. They had been forced to the last corner of the garden. I had seen the olive and cypress trees of the Garden of Gethsemane many times before, in the premonitions of Cyborea, the woman who claimed to be my mother in Kerioth, and in the oily vortices of Vincent van Gogh, where all was dread and the solipsistic curls of impending self-murder. In the midst of the night, I felt the oil beneath his feet, smearing through the grass and fallen red blossom. I plucked at one of the branches, and a trail of blood ran into my sleeve and toward my breast. The flight from the barricaded hovel had left some of the disciples euphoric at having escaped so narrowly. They lay back upon the ground and laughed with relief, their chests rising and falling hard and heavy. But soon they heard Jesus’ despair and were much afraid. They went near to him, half-concealing themselves like guilty shades behind the black trees, listening. And they saw that I was kneeling beside him.
“I know that it seems that I have been weeping for so much of my life, Judas, but my thoughts and my heart are heavy as millstones and always have been so. I live with despair upon despair, and I cannot find the kernel of it inside me.”
And Jesus stood up, staggering slightly, and gripped one of the olive trees for support, swinging there for a moment before collapsing to his knees again, like an actor working a stage. A noise came from his throat. The disciples gathered about him in the swollen dirt.
The sons of Zebedee urged him, “Despair not, my master.”
“It is more than despair,” he answered. “It is a passionate chasing of death.”
“Help us to understand what we are to do, for we would follow you to prisons and unto death, even.”
“No, this is not so. You would not.” The disciples were wounded by these words. Simon’s cheekbones shone with brilliant tears.
“Lord, I am ready.”
“No, Simon. The cockerel will not crow this morning until you have thrice denied that you know me. The morning star will hang in the dawn, and Lucifer will sift you aside like wheat.”
“He will fail, Lord!”
“No, he will not. So, I have prayed for you, that you will turn away from him again and make these others stronger.” And then Jesus clawed against the olive tree and rose to his feet. “I say unto you all, when I stripped you of your possessions, when you were without a purse, without sandals, did you lack anything?” His pointed finger moved from man to man.
“Nothing.”
“Now, you will need these things again. Take back your purse from the nail where you hung it in your darkened home, far away. Take up your sword. If you lack a sword, then buy one.”
I wondered at the continual reversals and strange mirrors in my brother’s mind.
“We will,” they said, but they were wracked with confusion and doubt. Yet, Jesus’ permission for them to carry money and swords and to assimilate with the middle class also gave them great relief. “Between us we have two swords and will buy more.” The disciples, who were exhausted, lay down to rest in the moonlight.
Jesus tried to smile, but a spectral agony was at work within him. He withdrew from them, but I shadowed him. Jesus prayed, and his tears fell upon the soil, heavy as blood from his eyes.
“Father, if you are willing, please take this cup from me. Still, I know that it is not my will that moves the world. If you will not remove the cup, if the only way for me to be rid of it is to drink it down, then I will.”
And I whispered “Drink, Jesus.”
“They are golden in the moonlight, like a cadre of angels.”
It was Malchus and Pilate’s soldiers.
My mouth moved inside the needles of his beard, not to identify him—because by this time, everyone knew Jesus of Nazareth by his somnambulant walk and dreaming words—but to inspire him for the last time, to breathe the remnants of my passion into him, and to finish what we had begun when we were children, to give him the strength to finish it. His brown eyes, as whorled and abandoned as snail shells, were closed, his pungent mouth disbelieving as the serpent of my breath hissed through his aching teeth, then passed over his tongue, into the shining purses of his flesh. I brought him here, constructed him from fleece, bone, blood, dust, wine, seed, straw, my occluded desires, my orphanage, the endless art of my fury. His disciples, his ineffectual mirrors, shivered between the soldiers and the knotted trees of Gethsemane. By this time, he could not resist anything that I suggested to him. It had been that way for so long that I did not have to witness him being led away.
Malchus reached inside his red cloak and tossed something at me. From reflex, I could not prevent my hand from reaching up to catch it before it struck me in the face. Malchus’ eyes glowed with jealousy and ancient hatred. The purse hit my hand, and my fingers closed around it. The coins inside it rattled like bones. I struck fast with my dagger, cutting off Malchus’ ear, and he fell to the ground howling in a foxy arc of blood.
“Bastard, I wanted no reward!”
“Judas!” The voices of the disciples rose against me.
Lightning struck in the black sky.
And I bolted.
