Judas Read Free Page A

“Where did you take her?”
    “Who?”
    “Your sister, where is she? You were supposed to watch her. She is your responsibility.”
    The road shimmered in the shadowless light of the sixth hour. The buildings, set side by side, were washed to whiteness by the sun. Mother had been sleeping and Dinah and I, unwilling to disturb her, walked down the road to see the stonemason’s new lambs, born the day before.
    “She is there.” I pointed to the road where it turned and at that moment Dinah rounded the corner, swinging her arms and singing. Her steps made the dust puff up between her toes.
    Mother had the disheveled look of someone brought suddenly from deep sleep to wakefulness. Her hair, unbound, spilled across her shoulders in a cascade of polished ebony. The heavy scent of nard clung to the air around her. She had thrown a loose azure robe over her shoulders which covered her, but not very well. The women from the shop next to ours shook their modestly covered heads, hair tucked out of sight, and clucked their disapproval.
    “You should have told me,” she said somewhat, but not wholly, mollified. “You should have told me.” With that she wheeled and retreated into the house, into its cool gloom.
    In truth, I had taken Dinah to see the lambs. I had other business with the stonemason. The day before, I had found a stone carving in the sand high up on the beach. It looked like a peculiarly plump woman with large breasts, short legs, the stomach of advanced pregnancy, and a painted face. It was crudely done, but I thought the stonemason would find it interesting. He turned it over in his hand. I watched his eyes.
    “Astarte,” he muttered under his breath, but I heard him. “Do you know what this is?” he said.
    “Yes, it is Astarte.” I said. I had no idea what that meant but I guessed he thought it important.
    “Do you know what it is worth?” he asked, surprised at my presumed knowledge. He had me there.
    He offered me a denarius and I asked for ten. His eyebrows shot up and he inhaled sharply. We settled for five. That is the way of the world. Men find profit from their neighbor’s ignorance. If I were managing that transaction today, I would get the ten, perhaps more.
    ***
     
    I arrived, my mother told me, wet and screaming in a small hut on the coast of the Great Sea along the Via Maris in one of the dusty outposts set every fifty stadia or so along the roadways to assure travelers safe passage throughout the empire. Legionnaires are assigned to them from time to time. I dropped into her life during one of my father’s stints in such an outpost. She named me after my grandfather, Judas of the Galilee, an irony lost on my father. We lived there for about two years. Whether my mother was happy or sad I cannot say. She had no choice but to bear her lot as a soldier’s wife. She never admitted that she was wife to no one and that her son was a mamzer , a bastard . My mother would have been twelve when she arrived at the outpost, thirteen when I was born.
    One day he disappeared, his cohort called north to put down some minor insurrection. I suppose he believed whoever replaced him would also assume proprietorship of my mother. She waited a week, and when she realized he was not coming back, decided to go to him. To a thirteen-year-old, that seemed the logical, sensible thing to do.
    “Then,” Mother said, “His detachment marched away. One morning at dawn, off they went, no good-byes, no notice, and no provision for those left behind—nothing.”
    Her eyes gazed past me, into the past, I suppose, inspecting it for some clue to explain what went wrong.
    “What was I supposed to do? He did not even ask me to follow. I did not know about those things. I only knew he could not marry me. Because I was an Israelite and he a Roman soldier, it could not be. I knew that, but I thought we were like man and wife, and then there was you. Men do not desert their children, do they? So we joined a caravan going