As we descended the slope, the sun climbed into thick clouds. Everywhere pilgrims were waking beneath the olive trees, the whole hillside seeming to undulate. We walked rapidly, quietly. The hymn I’d written to Sophia began to sing in my ears.
I was sent out from power . . .
Be careful. Do not ignore me.
I am she who exists in all fears and in trembling boldness
* * *
? ? ?
IN THE GARDEN, I dashed through the trees, calling Jesus’s name. No one answered. He did not step out of the gnarling shadows and open his arms, saying, “Ana, you’ve come back.”
We wandered through every part of the garden. “He’s not here,” Lavi said.
I came to a standstill, the frantic feeling still going in my chest. I’d been so sure I’d find him here. All night, as I’d wandered in and out of sleep, my mind had pulsed with images of this garden at the foot of the Kidron.
Where is he?
In the distance, I could see the Temple protruding beyond the city wall, casting its white dazzle in the air, and next to it the towers of Antonia, the Roman fortress. Lavi followed my gaze. “We should go and search in the city,” he said.
I was trying to imagine where in the vast maze of Jerusalem he could be—the Temple courts? the Pool of Bethesda?—when I heard someone moaning. The sound was deep and guttural, coming from the trees behind us. I started toward it, but Lavi stepped in my path. “Let me go and be certain there’s no danger.”
I waited as he ventured into the grove, disappearing behind an outcrop of rocks. “Ana, come quickly,” he called.
Judas sat on the ground hunched over his knees, rocking back and forth, making a godforsaken sound. “Judas! My Lord and my God, what has happened?” I knelt and placed my hand on his arm.
His crying ceased with my touch. He spoke without looking up. “Ana . . . I saw you . . . from a distance. I didn’t mean to draw your attention. . . . Do not look at me . . . I cannot bear it.”
A sudden coldness formed inside me then. I shot to my feet. “Judas, what did you do?” When he didn’t answer, I shouted, “What did you do?”
Lavi had kept a tactful distance, but he was beside me now. I didn’t take time to explain what was happening, but stooped once more in front of my brother, fighting to drive the fear and outrage from my throat. “Tell me, Judas. Now.”
He looked up and I saw it in his eyes. “You handed Jesus over to the Romans, didn’t you?”
I’d meant to hurl the accusation, wanting it to strike him like a slap, but the words came out in a whisper, floating into the quietness like a moth or a butterfly, its wings a thing of incomprehension. Judas squeezed his hand into a fist and struck himself hard in the chest. There was a leather pouch filled with silver coins opened beside him on the ground; he grabbed it and flung the money into the trees. I watched, breathless, as the coins fell to the ground and lay there glinting like the shed scales of some grotesque creature.
“I didn’t hand him to the Romans.” He was composed, but compelled now to recite every recrimination against himself. The scorpion-tail scar beneath his eye rippled up and down with his jaw. “Last night, I, his friend and brother, turned him over to the Temple guard, knowing they would hand him to the Romans. I led the guard here where I knew Jesus would be. I kissed his cheek so the soldiers would know who he was.” He pointed to a spot in front of him. “That’s where Jesus stood when I kissed him. Just there.”
I looked at the place where he’d pointed—brown dirt, tiny white rocks, the imprint of sandals.
He kept talking in his tortured, calm voice. “I wanted to give the people a reason to revolt. I wanted to help bring God’s kingdom. I thought it was what he wanted,