PART TWO
In the bazaar, the night was brighter than noon day. Burning lamps hung on poles, and there were dancing girls undulating like serpents, seen by the light of an open tent decorated in dizzying paisleys and spirals. On a tower like a needle, the plaintive voice of a young boy, clear as a bell sang into the night
“If love were a matter of kisses
How easy it would be
If love was only words then I would write it down for you
Beyond passion, more powerful than a mother’s hand
Is love
Give me your word, o lovely one
I will give you my deeds.”
Sidon was one of the great cities on the trade routes, and trading was the great work of the Jews, travelers since the days of Father Abraham. They stopped in stalls to learn of the Jews of Cilicia and Rome as well as what was happening south in Egypt, and more importantly, in Jerusalem.
“They say that Antipater, that one that some called Antipas—”
“The fox!” James swore.
“They say he is preparing to marry his brother’s wife.
“Which brother?”
“Philip, who calls himself Herod as well.”
“This answers nothing,” Jesus said, bored, playing with one of his toes, “They all commit incest and they’re all named Herod.”
“The old king, the old monster, Herod Philip is the son of his second wife Miriamne, not the first one he killed.”
“Are we talking about Herodias?” Jesus asked.
“Yes.”
“All these famous people,” Jesus commented. “We know so much about them ,and they do not even know we exist.”
The merchant nodded to the truth of this and said, “But Herodias was the daughter of Herod’s old heir, one of his sons by the Great Miriamne, last of the Hasmoneans. So her blood is doubly royal, one of the lines that connects the Herod clan to the priestly families, and so she is a great prize and many say a great beauty.”
“Was it her money or her face that made her a great beauty?” Lazaros asked.
“Does it matter?” the merchant asked, and they agreed that it it did not.”
“She has left her husband. As if she were a Roman woman she has divorced him and is on her way to marry our Antipas of Galilee. They say she is bringing her daughter the Princess Salome with her.”
“Is she not related to Antipas, then, for they are all related?” Magdalene said.
“Mistress,” the merchant who loved gossip said, “Herodias was the niece of her first husband, and having married one uncle, she is on her way to marry the other one!”
“And you know, said one of the women whom Magdalene assumed was the merchant’s wife, “that she brought her daughter to that her uncle and husband might have a turn at that girl as well!”
“Foul, foul,” James shook his head. “And foul as the Romans if not fouler.”
“Not fouler,” Jude disagreed, shaking his head. “Never fouler than those bastards. Oh, for Israel to be free!”
“Now that is a song I will never sing,” the merchant said “For Israel is down there and we are here, and when in half a thousand years has Israel ever not been under the yoke of another?”
Aside from the Jewish merchants were the Greeks, both from Ionia and their mainland, and those mixed with the blood of Bactrians and Indians. Great Alexander’s conquest had spread far across the world, and his Macedonians had settled on its very edges, intermarrying with the various Indian peoples and going even further. Those merchants brought not only incense and jewels but the philophies of the Hindu Brahmans, and of their holy men who sat naked in forests, depriving themselves as well as the philosophies of orange robed monks who followed a man called the Buddha. Adding to this were the fast talking but level headed Arabs who carried their goods on the rounded backs of loping camels across the great desert from Yemen and Bharain and Saba. All of these coverged in the bazaars and remained in the night, outdoing each other in lavish parties.
“See what you miss, staying in Jerusalem,” Cyron said.
“There is life in Jerusalem,” Lazaros defended his city.
Years of knowing him meant Cyron understood he need say nothing, but only look at his old master, and then Lazaros said, “I must return soon. But I promise one day to go on my great adventure, and when I do, we will stay here a very long time.”
John yawned and the merchant said, “Does this young one need bed?”
“No, no,” John said, blinking. “I don’t dare close my eyes. There is so much to see…. So very much.”
And then leaning against Jesus, he promptly fell asleep.
Jesus rose before the others, but John saw him as he slipped into his sandals. Without asking, he wrapped his cloak around him and after a nod from Jesus, followed his cousin out of the house and into the early morning streets. Above the secents of baking bead, frying fish and animal dung came the smell of incense that they followed to a great white stone block of a pillared temple. It was one of the ancient kind, though a Greek sloped roof had been added. It had the turned out horns rising from the corners, the horns of the Great Bull which was the form by which all that part of the world had known God.
As they climbed the steps, which stopped at landings, the first landing bearing an altar from which frankincense and myrrh rose, Jesus turned about and said, “This is the house of Eshmun, the Son of Zedek, the Son of Justice, the Son of God.”
Without reluctance, Jesus placed copper coins in the offering box as he passed through the pillars and entered a sunlit space. Here were people in white, being led back and forth to baths, being blessed and prayed over, and John said, “I had heard of temples to their God Asklepios, which are just like this, where all they do is heal.”
A young man in white who had been leading a fairl woman up a flight of stairs now said, “This is the house of healing and rebirth.”
“Even for a Jew?” Jesus jested.
“For anyone who seeks it,” said the young man, and he was beautiful.
“However, as I look on you, the both of you, I believe the rebirth you seek is in other chambers of this temple. And at other times.”
“Is a temple not always a temple?” John asked, “Or does it change from one thing to another?”
“This temple changes into many things,” the young man said, touching John’s arm and smiling sleepily.
As he turned to leave he said, “Come in the night. Come in the night and see.”
That night, hand and hand, they walked the streets of Sidon, looking for the strange temple of the beating drums. Everything they saw told them Rome was here. Rome ruled the world, the newest in a long succession of rulers. Back home it was a matter of great upset and Israel, which had never been free acted as if it was always free. But here John noted how good it was to have lit streets and something like safety even if it was the safety to sin. In the alleys one still saw prostitutes being taken against the wall by lust filled men, and here they saw the young boys pretty with eyeliner leading men into the dark.
Smelling of incense, rows of great stone pillars rising in the night, was the Temple of Eshmun. They followed the heartbeat of the steadily throbbing drums up the steps that stopped at a landing with an altar and then continued to the top of the steps where Jesus and John looked down on the city beneath them. The cool breeze from the sea was lost in the heat of the pillared porch and the heat that came from the open doors, and as they passed through the open bronze doors into the temple, Jesus placed a copper coin in the offering box and they arrived in a place of beating drums and blue glass lamps and red glass lamps turning about on tables to make a pulsing light. John saw no priests or attendants, and so he followed Jesus, who followed a man, in a short tunic with an almost shaven head and squared shoulders who had arrived just before them, it seemed. He went through a door, and there was a room filled with shelves and cubbyholes, and the man whom they followed lifted his robe and was naked and narrow waisted, full bottomed, and he placed his robe in one of the boxes and wordless, quickly, Jesus did the same. So did John, and now all three of them were in a naked line, moving toward splashing water in the dimness, and John thought, is this like the womb? Well, not quite like a womb.
There were baths and a room where men pulld on cords and water showered down on them, and here that man and several others were washing, some of them washing a long time, touching themselves, showing their desire, and John trembled and looked to Jesus who washed himself as naturally as if he were anywhere else. But that first man was leaving the showers, and there was something familiar about the slight stoop in his shoulders, water rolling from his heavy buttocks as he stepped into the steaming pool barely visible in the dark. Jesus took John by the hand, and they followed him into the hot water. When the man raised his head from the water, they saw, smiling at them over a long moustache, the green eyes of the man they had traveled into Sidon with. Jesus laughed.
“Fancy us meeting here,” Jesus murmured.
The man laughed and said, “I see we’re the same, you and I. Finding God on the dark road?”
“Is this the dark road?” Jesus wondered, dipping his head in the water, and lifting it, water fell from the ropes of his hair.
The green eyed man grinned at him, and he was beautiful. John was seized with the desire to kiss him and then, suddenly, the green eyed man sank beneath the water, and a moment later, Jesus cried out, his eyes widening, and then he closed them, his hands sinking in the water.
The next moment the green eyed man popped out of the water, still grinning, wiping water from his face.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Is it?”
John’s face was hot, and man looked on him, smiling.
“No,” he said. “No, you mustn’t be left out, either.”
And again he sank under the water,and John felt hands on his hips hands grasping his buttocks and a mouth suddenly sucking on his penis. The pent up desire rose up, instantly making him hard, but as soon as he hardened, the water forced the man to come back up out of the water.
“Come,” he said to them. “I’ve been in this place before.”
“But I saw this place in the day,” Jesus said, not quite bewildered as the man with green eyes took him by the hand.
“They were bathing, being baptized and anointed by priests, transformed into holiness.”
The temple was like a maze, now and again lit with red and blue lanterns, and where the booming music came from, John could not tell, He walked naked, but strangely uncaring, behind the two naked men, Jesus the taller, and in the corners and against the walls, men were making love, some were spread eagle against the walls while others knelt before them, greedily sucking. In little doorless rooms, John had peeks of men taking liquids, taking pills, smoking pipes, sucking and fucking, shadows of pleasure in the dark.
“And what makes you think,” the man with green eyes said,”that this isn’t holiness.”
Jesus said nothing, and now the man looked at him and said, “I’m so glad you came. I knew you would come. I prayed to the Dark God you would come. The moment I saw you I wanted you.”
And so saying, he sank to his knees and took Jesus in his mouth, He bent down on hands and knees pleasuring him and John watched Jesus’s mute pleasure in his own mute pain, and he watched the muscled, green eyed man before he knew what he desired and he sank to his own knees and grasped the man’s hips. His buttocks were strong and round and John longed for the cleft of them. He trust his tongue into the man who cried out, reaching back and stroking John’s head, and as they gave themselves up to pleasure, John experienced, for the first time, surrender. Dimly playing through his mind as his tongue thrust into the rough asshole of this man, John dared to think: baptism.
He had his own room in the temple he explained. They had seen him smoking the strange grass before in the forest and now they passed it about again, and John watched Jesus’s eyes bulge and his own nose singed when he smoked the herb. John’s senses became softer. He melted a little, and this man had all manner of drugs that would have been forbidden back home, but here they did them and their lives passed from red into blue into ecstasy and John remembered being in the shed with James and James saying, “We must never do this again,” and now the laughing, green eyed man with the moustache was saying nothing was forbidden and he and Jesus were curled limb and limb together kissing greedily, and hands in each other’s hair. The man was gesturing for John to join them and John longed to kiss him and tasted his rough tongue with the dark herbs on it and in his saliva, and now he kissed Jesus and now he was between the both of them, and someone put something to his nose and he inhaled its fumes and his whole body went rigid and then melted again. Everything melted.
While John drifts into sleep, he hears Jesus laughing, a little sleepy, a little tipsy. He and the green eyed man lie in each others arms so comfortably, and Jesus strokes John’s hip affectionately, touches his hair. John, almost not there, blinks and looks to his cousin and sees Jesus and the green eyed man in a long, passionate kiss. Their eyes are nearly closed.
“I don’t even know your name,” Jesus says.
“And I don’t know yours,” the man laughs.
“It is Jesus.”
“Jesus,” the man says, considering.
“Jesus,” Jesus says.
“Like Eshmun.”
“Almost.”
“Then maybe you came here to meet yourself.”
“It is possible,” Jesus said.
“Jesus,” said the other man. “I am Yehuda of Kerioth.”
“How very… Judean.”
The man laughs again and nodded.
“If you prefer,” he said, kissing Jesus on the lips for a long moment, “you may call me Judas Iscariot.”
