disciples with their unreasonable lies that encouraged the poor and feckless. Cassius Gallio was occasionally angry, but the military life inhibited sustained feeling. Thankfully. His legion was posted east, where he supervised building works and assembled collections of coins. For months on end he’d forget to wonder what the story of Jesus could mean, obsessed with blisters and his next appointment with the booze. He consciously refused to look for Jesus, in the bottle and once in the arms of a shop girl. And soon after that, Gallio didn’t look for Jesus in the waiting room of a sexual health clinic. He didn’t look for him and he wasn’t there.
While a doctor swabbed him and asked how much he drank, Gallio did think briefly about Jesus and how to get his life back on track. He wasn’t without virtue: he refused to pay for sex and every month his wages were deducted at source and half sent to his wife and child in Jerusalem. Not that he had much choice. He was a grunt in the civilized army from the civilized world, and obligations were expected to be honored.
If he was ever homesick, and he thinks he sometimes was, it wasn’t a sickness for Judith and Alma or for any of the homes he could remember. He longed for a kind of unnamed absence, with a tearfulness he found unsettling. Sentiment, self-pity: he wiped his eyes and dismissed these useless emotions that brought him no relief. He was not the person he’d wanted to be. The worldwas not decipherable as promised, with a reason for everything if only he could see what it was.
An unamused nurse burned off his genital warts, smoke rebounding from the ceiling. Gallio remembered Valeria, but whatever his problem Valeria wasn’t the solution, and antibiotics with beer and loneliness felt like a punishment that had finally arrived. Only he didn’t believe in cosmic justice, so he preferred not to think at all.
‘How can you tell it isn’t Jesus?’
‘I just know.’
The dismembered head belongs to a disciple, though Cassius Gallio can’t say for sure which one. He has been a long time away, and the eleven survivors always looked similar to him: they look like Jesus. Ten. Judas gone, now this one too. Ten survivors left, and anyway Jesus is dead. Why had Valeria asked if the dead man in the stable was Jesus?
Observation, reason. The dark horseshit in the stable contains pieces of yellow straw. No, beyond that. The shit is lightly cracked, days old.
‘How could it be Jesus when Jesus is dead?’
‘You tell me. I asked the Israelis to wait for our experts, meaning you. As the representative of a global power I made an official recommendation to a tiny security service. Hopeless. They couldn’t follow a simple instruction.’
‘Who couldn’t?’
‘Baruch. Not an easy man, but on their side he deals with everything Jesus. Always has.’
Gallio knows who Baruch is. He tried to kill Lazarus after the incomprehensible events at Bethany, when Lazarus appeared to come back to life. He killed the son of the widow of Nain, a teenage boy who Jesus also allegedly resurrected. A militarypatrol found the boy in a wood outside his pathetic little village, his throat cut from ear to ear. That’s Baruch, who picked Cassius Gallio’s daughter up from school. The involvement of Baruch feels like further punishment, but Gallio doesn’t know for what.
‘I think this head belongs to a James.’
Gallio squats down and looks closely at the half a dead face he can see. Memories flood back, and he warms to the idea of becoming an expert, of knowing what few other people can know. ‘I’m fairly sure. Who was the other one they captured?’
‘They say it was Peter. Unconfirmed. He escaped.’
James and Peter, but Valeria has let herself speculate that one of the captives was Jesus. This is the more interesting information that Gallio now has in his possession. If the CCU are prepared to reconsider, and conclude that Jesus may be alive, it would explain their decision
While a doctor swabbed him and asked how much he drank, Gallio did think briefly about Jesus and how to get his life back on track. He wasn’t without virtue: he refused to pay for sex and every month his wages were deducted at source and half sent to his wife and child in Jerusalem. Not that he had much choice. He was a grunt in the civilized army from the civilized world, and obligations were expected to be honored.
If he was ever homesick, and he thinks he sometimes was, it wasn’t a sickness for Judith and Alma or for any of the homes he could remember. He longed for a kind of unnamed absence, with a tearfulness he found unsettling. Sentiment, self-pity: he wiped his eyes and dismissed these useless emotions that brought him no relief. He was not the person he’d wanted to be. The worldwas not decipherable as promised, with a reason for everything if only he could see what it was.
An unamused nurse burned off his genital warts, smoke rebounding from the ceiling. Gallio remembered Valeria, but whatever his problem Valeria wasn’t the solution, and antibiotics with beer and loneliness felt like a punishment that had finally arrived. Only he didn’t believe in cosmic justice, so he preferred not to think at all.
‘How can you tell it isn’t Jesus?’
‘I just know.’
The dismembered head belongs to a disciple, though Cassius Gallio can’t say for sure which one. He has been a long time away, and the eleven survivors always looked similar to him: they look like Jesus. Ten. Judas gone, now this one too. Ten survivors left, and anyway Jesus is dead. Why had Valeria asked if the dead man in the stable was Jesus?
Observation, reason. The dark horseshit in the stable contains pieces of yellow straw. No, beyond that. The shit is lightly cracked, days old.
‘How could it be Jesus when Jesus is dead?’
‘You tell me. I asked the Israelis to wait for our experts, meaning you. As the representative of a global power I made an official recommendation to a tiny security service. Hopeless. They couldn’t follow a simple instruction.’
‘Who couldn’t?’
‘Baruch. Not an easy man, but on their side he deals with everything Jesus. Always has.’
Gallio knows who Baruch is. He tried to kill Lazarus after the incomprehensible events at Bethany, when Lazarus appeared to come back to life. He killed the son of the widow of Nain, a teenage boy who Jesus also allegedly resurrected. A militarypatrol found the boy in a wood outside his pathetic little village, his throat cut from ear to ear. That’s Baruch, who picked Cassius Gallio’s daughter up from school. The involvement of Baruch feels like further punishment, but Gallio doesn’t know for what.
‘I think this head belongs to a James.’
Gallio squats down and looks closely at the half a dead face he can see. Memories flood back, and he warms to the idea of becoming an expert, of knowing what few other people can know. ‘I’m fairly sure. Who was the other one they captured?’
‘They say it was Peter. Unconfirmed. He escaped.’
James and Peter, but Valeria has let herself speculate that one of the captives was Jesus. This is the more interesting information that Gallio now has in his possession. If the CCU are prepared to reconsider, and conclude that Jesus may be alive, it would explain their decision
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