“But it makes me feel so bad.”
“You see the puzzle, then? Jealousy makes you feel bad, but God is jealous, so it must be good, yet when a dog licks its balls it seems to enjoy it, but it must be bad under the Law.”
Suddenly Joshua was yanked to his feet by the ear. The Pharisee glared at him. “Is the Law of Moses too boring for you, Joshua bar Joseph?”
“I have a question, Rabbi,” Joshua said.
“Oh, jeez.” I hid my head in my arms.
Chapter 4
Yet another reason that I loathe the heavenly scum with whom I share this room: today I found that I had offended our intrepid room service waiter, Jesus. How was I to know? When he brought our pizza for dinner, I gave him one of the American silver coins that we received from the airport sweet shop called Cinnabon. He scoffed at me—scoffed—then, thinking better of it, he said, “Señor, I know you are foreign, so you do not know, but this is a very insulting tip. Better you just sign the room service slip so I get the fee that is added automatically. I tell you this because you have been very kind, and I know you do not mean to offend, but another of the waiters would spit in your food if you should offer him this.”
I glared at the angel, who, as usual, was lying on the bed watching television, and for the first time I realized that he did not understand Jesus’ language. He did not possess the gift of tongues he had bestowed on me. He spoke Aramaic to me, and he seemed to know Hebrew and enough English to understand television, but of Spanish he understood not a word. I apologized to Jesus and sent him on his way with a promise that I would make it up to him, then I wheeled on the angel.
“You fool, these coins, these dimes, are nearly worthless in this country.”
“What do you mean, they look like the silver dinars we dug up in Jerusalem, they are worth a fortune.”
He was right, in a way. After he called me up from the dead I led him to a cemetery in the valley of Ben Hiddon, and there, hidden behind a stone where Judas had put it two thousand years ago, was the blood money—thirty silver dinars. But for a little tarnish, they looked just as they did on the day I had taken them, and they were almost identical to the coin this country calls the dime (except for the image of Tiberius on the dinars, and some other Caesar on the dime). We had taken the dinars to an antiquities dealer in the old city (which looked nearly the same as it did when I’d last walked there, except that the Temple was gone and in its place two great mosques). The merchant gave us twenty thousand dollars in American money for them. It was this money that we had traveled on, and deposited at the hotel desk for our expenses. The angel told me the dimes must have the same worth as the dinars, and I, like a fool, believed him.
“You should have told me,” I said to the angel. “If I could leave this room I would know myself.”
“You have work to do,” the angel said. Then he leapt to his feet and shouted at the television, “The wrath of the Lord shall fall upon ye, Stephanos!”
“What in the hell are you shouting at?”
The angel wagged a finger at the screen, “He has exchanged Catherine’s baby for its evil twin, which he fathered with her sister while she was in a coma, yet Catherine does not realize his evil deed, as he has had his face changed to impersonate the bank manager who is foreclosing on Catherine’s husband’s business. If I was not trapped here I would personally drag the fiend straight to hell.”
For days now the angel had been watching serial dramas on television, alternately shouting at the screen or bursting into tears. He had stopped reading over my shoulder, so I had just tried to ignore him, but now I realized what was going on.
“It’s not real, Raziel.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s drama, like the Greeks used to do. They are actors in a play.”
“No, no one could pretend to such evil.”
“That’s not all. Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus? Not real. Characters in a play.”
“You lying dog!”
“If you’d ever leave the room and look at how real people talk you’d know that, you yellow-haired cretin. But no, you stay here perched on my shoulder like a trained bird. I am dead two thousand years and even I know better.” (I still need to get a look at that book in the dresser. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could goad the angel into giving me five minutes privacy.)
“You know nothing,” said Raziel. “I have destroyed whole cities in my time.”
“Sort of makes me wonder if you destroyed the right ones. That’d be embarrassing, huh?”
Then an advertisement came on the screen for a magazine that promised to “fill in all the blanks” and give the real inside story to all of soap operas: Soap Opera Digest. I watched the angel’s eyes widen. He grabbed the phone and rang the front desk.
“What are you doing?”
“I need that book.”
“Have them send up Jesus,” I said. “He’ll help you get it.”
On our first day of work, Joshua and I were up before dawn. We met near the well and filled the waterskins our fathers had given us, then ate our breakfasts, flatbread and cheese, as we walked together to Sepphoris. The road, although packed dirt most of the way, was smooth and easy to walk. (If Rome saw to anything in its territories, it was the lifelines of its army.) As we walked we watched the rock-strewn hills turn pink under the rising sun, and I saw Joshua shudder as if a chill wind had danced up his spine.
“The glory of God is in everything we see,” he said. “We must never forget that.”
“I just stepped in camel dung. Tomorrow let’s leave after it’s light out.”
“I just realized it, that is why the old woman wouldn’t live again. I forgot that it wasn’t my power that made her arise, it was the Lord’s. I brought her back for the wrong reason, out of arrogance, so she died a second time.”
“It squished over the side of my sandal. Well, that’s going to smell all day.”
“But perhaps it was because I did not touch her. When I’ve brought other creatures back to life, I’ve always touched them.”
“Is there something in the Law about taking your camel off the road to do his business? There should be. If not the Law of Moses, then the Romans should have one. I mean, they won’t hesitate to crucify a Jew who rebels, there should be some punishment for messing up their roads. Don’t you think? I’m not saying crucifixion, but a good smiting in the mouth or something.”
“But how could I have touched the corpse when it is forbidden by the Law? The mourners would have stopped me.”
“Can we stop for a second so I can scrape off my sandal? Help me find a stick. That pile was as big as my head.”
“You’re not listening to me, Biff.”
“I am listening. Look, Joshua, I don’t think the Law applies to you. I mean, you’re the Messiah, God is supposed to tell you what he wants, isn’t he?”
“I ask, but I receive no answer.”
“Look, you’re doing fine. Maybe that woman didn’t live again because she was stubborn. Old people are that way. You have to throw water on my grandfather to get him up from his nap. Try a young dead person next time.”
“What if I am not really the Messiah?”
“You mean you’re not sure? The angel didn’t give it away? You think that God might be playing a joke on you? I don’t think so. I don’t know the Torah as well as you, Joshua, but I don’t remember God having a sense of humor.”
Finally, a grin. “He gave me you as a best friend, didn’t he?”
“Help me find a stick.”
“Do you think I’ll make a good stonemason?”
“Just don’t be better at it than I am. That’s all I ask.”
“You stink.”
“What have I been saying?”
“You really think Maggie likes me?”
“Are you going to be like this every morning? Because if you are, you can walk to work alone.”
The gates of Sepphoris were like a funnel of humanity. Farmers poured out into their fields and groves, craftsmen and builders crowded in, while merchants hawked their wares and beggars moaned at the roadside. Joshua and I stopped outside the gates to marvel and were nearly run down by a man leading a string of donkeys laden with baskets of stone.