A Free Man in Prison
For years the wise man had wandered through the desert. For years he had fled false justice so that he could know true justice. Yet now, callused feet submerged in the Dead Sea’s stinging salt water, he awaits his arrest. Why?
The reason is simple: He is tired.
For a long while the wise man looks across the western sea. The sun sets below the horizon. It goes to light places he has never seen, ones with different views on justice and truth and morality. He wonders: What qualifies as truth there? He wonders, for he knows there is no truth — only truths. And yet, everyone thinks that his truth is the truth.
This is the root of the trouble, he thinks. Perhaps my crime would not be a crime in the place where the sun travels. He doubts it, but the thought yields a smile, and he has not smiled for a long time. For a few minutes more he looks out on the world. His heart is at peace.
“Abram,” comes a voice.
“It’s time,” he acknowledges. He lifts his feet from the lapping water and turns to face the small regiment of soldiers. They stand firm, with hard eyes and unflinching faces and muscular bodies draped in all the ornaments of power — square shields, crimson cloaks, purple scepters, long swords.
“You have escaped justice for a long time,” the officer says as his small eyes travel over the wise man’s tangled grey beard and creased brow. “Yes, Abram, you have grown old while you have hidden from justice. But now it is come.”
For a moment the wise man says nothing. Then he looks into the officer’s green eyes and says, calmly: “I had justice when I was free. You are not granting justice; you are stealing it.” As the wise man says this, he thinks on how, usually, those who claim to dispense justice are the greatest criminals of all.
And then the wise man stretches his arms out and awaits the blow that is coming. He knows the blow is coming because the soldiers live by the illusion that power grants legitimacy. They confuse authority gained through might with authority gained through right. They believe the strong have authority to rule over the weak for no better reason than that they are the strong.
A sword’s hilt slams against his forehead, and it all goes black.
The wise man awakes in a small, dark cell that is pungent with the stench of piss and death. His arms are stretched above his head and bound to a wooden wall, his legs chained to the stone floor.
To his right is a rapist, to his left a murderer. Their crimes have been forever branded on them with a hot iron — for in this world there is no room for forgiveness — and even in the darkness the symbols of their trespasses are clearly outlined on their bare chests, highlighted by the white moonlight streaming in through the narrow window. Until their executions, these men will not be known as men; no, the signs have granted them new names: Rapist and Murderer. That is all they are now, and that is all they will ever be remembered as. Strangely, the wise man himself has not yet been branded with a crime.
Though it is dark the wise man can tell by their outlines that the criminals are emaciated and that whatever life they have left will soon ebb from their bodies. Despite their crimes he feels sorry for them. Here they are — Rapist, Murderer — yet each man is also human. Their crimes did not change that. While the soldiers and the state would disagree, the wise man knows that empathizing with the men does not mean condoning their crimes. There is room for mercy inside of justice, for without mercy justice is not justice at all, merely retribution.
And what is my crime? the wise man wonders. Even after all these years he remains ignorant of the answer to this question, but he suspects it has something to do with this sentiment, with his views on justice and his capacity for forgiveness, with his weariness for humans and his love for the world, with his conviction that the strongest men are truly those who seem the weakest, and the weakest men truly those who seem the strongest.
“Do you regret what you did?” the wise man says suddenly.
“Every day,” says one man, from the darkness. “Yes,” the other agrees.
“Because what you did is wrong, or because it has imprisoned you?”
“I do not know,” the rapist says.
“I do not know,” the murderer agrees.
“If you could go back in time, would you do it again?”
“No,” they both say, and then they both begin to weep, and their replies are a good answer, but the wise man knows that their answers came only from selfishness, and so he sighs and he wrings his hands and he falls back asleep.
What is there to do in prison, but sleep?
*
“You must remember your crime!”
“I do not,” the wise man says, and he really does not. For some reason his vision is blurred and he cannot see his interrogator. “I do not know what I did wrong.”
“Confess your crimes!”
“I would if only I knew their names..”
“Abram…” At first, bizarrely, he hears the voice as a female one. For an instant he has memories of smooth olive skin and scented brown hair, of precious scenes that had dissolved into dust a long, long time ago. These are good memories and he rejoices within them for as long as he can, for he knows too well that their source is forever gone.
But then the haze clears and he sees the prison warden, the small-eyed Canaanite officer who had arrested him: Thomas.
“Yes, Thomas?” the wise man says wearily.
“The emperor wants you dead. I don’t know why, and indeed sometimes I think even he does not know why. All he said is that he knows what you are doing is wrong, that what you did under his father’s rule was wrong, even if he cannot describe it. We want you to describe it to us. What did you do in your younger days? What crime angered the emperor’s father so much? What did you do wrong?”
“I did nothing wrong.”
“Come now,” Thomas says wearily, “there has been a warrant out for your arrest for forty years. You did something wrong.”
“No.” The wise man’s gaze meets Thomas’ eyes across the wooden table and he knows he will not admit to anything. This justice is their justice, this system is their system. He signed no contract at birth binding himself to their laws — no citizen did. The emperor had no right to lord over him or anyone else.
“Your laws are not my morality. You want me to tell you what I did because in order to kill me ‘lawfully,’ you must first brand me with a crime, and you do not know what to call this crime. Thomas, you are a good man, so I tell you truthfully: I did nothing wrong.”
“Then what did you do, Abram?” Thomas whispers. His eyes are wide and for some reason he seems scared yet eager, as if some essential part of his worldview hinges on the answer the wise man will give him now.
“I cannot remember the details,” the wise man says sadly, and it is the truth. His memory had suppressed his “crime” long ago, for it was a great act, an act no man can bear to carry in his memory and still live.
“You must try.”
“I will.” And then the wise man closes his eyes and searches his abused, injured, shattered soul for what happened before The Bad Thing, reaches for the nature of what he had been before his true life had fallen apart all those years ago.
And he remembers.
“The unexamined life is not worth living,” a younger wise man says. He is not as wise as he will be in the future, after things fall apart, but he recognizes even now the essential truth of this statement. It is a truth Socrates had spoken more than three centuries before. It is why he is a wise man.
“Judging by your constant ruminating, the too-examined life is not worth living either,” his student — Sophia — shoots back. She is sitting at his feet in the Athenian market, the agora, her hazel eyes wide and eager and hopeful with the great thirst for knowledge.
“Oh?” The wise man laughs. “A witty statement, yes, but that does not make it true. Support your supposition.”
“Well…”
She cannot continue, though, for suddenly sound floods the agora. Romans stream into the market, resplendent in the red capes wrapped tight around their bodies and the sigils of Emperor Caesar Augustus that cling to their belts.
As the other Athenians do, Abram tenses; these men had occupied Greece for well over a hundred years, yet still they struck fear into the wise man’s heart, still they seemed distinctly foreign and distinct from the Greeks. For to these Romans, strength was the highest virtue; to the Athenians, wisdom was. So long as this distinction remained there could be no reconciliation.
Despite his fear, the wise man notices something strange: There is a man inside the crowd of soldiers, a man with a ragged, black beard and matted, black hair, a well-traveled man — a wise man, the wise man observes — and an unpleasant fate seems to await him.
“Come, girl,” Abram whispers to Sophia, and together they weave their way through the throng that surrounds the scene.
“I’m scared,” Sophia says.
Gingerly, Abram puts his right arm around her and points at the prisoner and whispers: “Imagine, then, how he feels.” Then he looks at the scrawny man — really looks at him. He has a foreign air about him, and his eyes shine in a way that Abram has not previously witnessed. He has been cast onto the ground and he is surrounded by at least two dozen Roman soldiers, who are jeering unintelligently in low-Latin, and in Greek the man is blabbering something about redemption, sins, forgiveness, the kingdom of God…
“He is a Jew?” Sophia says perplexedly. For even she — so young — can tell something is off about him.
“No.”
“Then what is he?”
“He is like a Jew, yet he is not a Jew. He is of a new Jewish sect — a splinter sect. I have not heard much about them, only that they worship a man whom they call the Son of God, a man who was killed about fifteen years ago in Judea under Pontius Pilate. A man named Jesus of Nazareth.”
“They worship a man?”
“Well, not exactly…”
“A demigod, then?”
“Not quite.”
“Then what?”
Abram hesitates. He does not know enough about this new religion to give Sophia an accurate portrait. Luckily, he does not have to make something up, for suddenly and remarkably the prisoner’s eyes open and fill with new energy, though the wise man does not know from what source he draws his strength.
“My name is Paul!” the prisoner screams. “My name is Paul, and this is injustice!” he says, and this time in a smaller voice, but there is a fire in his eyes, and Abram thinks with a start that he has heard this name before, that he has heard of Paul of Tarsus’ teachings in Ephesus and Tyre and Sidon, of his interest in this strange new cult from the East, of his absolute certainty in his doctrine’s truth.
“Shut up!” a Roman shouts in Latin. He slams the butt of his sword into Paul’s stomach, yet remarkably the prisoner does not fall back, does not even waver.
No, he stands firm and his brown, Semitic eyes look straight ahead and then they meet Abram’s eyes for a moment, for just the briefest of moments, really, but this moment seems like an eternity. The wise man loses himself in that gaze.
When Paul is nudged forward and their eyes break contact Abram feels as if some essential part of his soul has been ripped away. The immensity of the moment stays with the wise man as Paul is carted away to the barracks to be imprisoned.
Imprisoned, Abram thinks. But then what? Killed?
His heart leaps; he is interested in learning more of this strange religion, and he thinks that Paul seems like a good man — a just man. For there was forgiveness in those eyes, there was redemption, there was a chance to escape the brutal past. These are the things that Abram desires most. These are the things that he has always desired. Like other men, he knows he does not deserve these things; for like all other men, he is depraved, and his soul is filled with bitterness and hatred and lies and doubts and that worst evil of all, ego.
But something tells him this does not matter. For he also knows that the God of Paul is a merciful God, in contrast to unmerciful humanity. It is this God that he wishes to know more about. It is this doctrine — mercy — that he wishes to learn more of.
“What will you do?” Sophia says, for she knows the wise man’s heart better than anyone else.
“I will do what is just.”
“And what is just?”
“I must free Paul from ‘justice.’”
*
That night the wise man becomes a brave man, and in doing so he truly earns the title of wise man. For he puts on a long, dark cloak and carries a long, dark walking stick, and with these alone he sets out to talk to the man who would become a saint, this remarkable person named Paul of Tarsus.
Gaining access to the prison is not difficult; there is one guard only, a corrupt guard, and the wise man bribes him with thirty silver pieces. It is nearly all the money he has, but he does not mind. For the money will make the wise man a wiser man.
The wise man enters Paul’s cell quietly. He enters, and for a long while he does naught but stare at the lone figure sleeping on the moon-lit floor. Paul of Tarsus is a poor man, a ragged man — a look extenuated by his shaggy black hair and thick, knotted beard. His frame is thin — dangerously so — and through his tunic the wise man can tell there lies a body that is defined by ribs and bones.
As if to confirm his weakened state, Paul’s breathing comes out in harsh-sounding spurts. Broad, droopy circles outline his eyes. Truly, this Paul has the look of a small man, of a tired man, of a man who has been defeated many times and who will be defeated even more in the future.
And it is this fact that struck the wise man so much, back in the agora. For despite having the look of a man who has been defeated, somehow the man is not defeated. By all logic, by all natural law, this man Paul should have given up long ago. Yet somehow he continues to walk through the Mediterranean preaching his doctrine of redemption and forgiveness, no matter how much suffering is heaped upon him.
The wise man wishes to know how. From where does this Paul draw his energy, when most men in his position would lack the strength even to eat? More than how, though, the wise man wishes to know why. What doctrine could have moved this man, this Paul, so much? What impels him to continue?
“Paul,” says the wise man gingerly, willing him awake. “Paul,” he repeats.
“Yes,” the man whispers, and his eyes are still closed, and his voice is low.
“Why do you continue? What impels you, when you have suffered so much? Surely you should have given up on the world by now.”
For a long time Paul says nothing. Then he sits up, stretches, and dips a finger in the pewter of water that has been set out in front of him. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again,” he says, his look grave, as if he is remembering the words of someone else, the words of one who had lived far away and a long time ago, “but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”
The wise man’s breath catches. “Whose words are these?”
“The words of Jesus Christ.”
“And this man’s words, like water…they fill you?”
“They do.”
“Teach me, then,” says the wise man. “I do not believe, but teach me,” he says again.
And so he does.
The wise man sits and he listens and he hears all Paul has to tell him. He is not convinced of Jesus’ divinity; no, he doubts far too much for that. Yet despite this, much of what he hears rings true to him.
Yes, in this world where strong dominates weak, in this society where cold justice dominates forgiveness, in this city of Athens where so many are sad, and anxious, and fearful, yet where all attempt to hide their doubts under a film of false perfection, the wise man sees much that is good and true in what the man Jesus said.
More, he sees how Paul has continued, despite it all: he sees that the strongest souls are birthed from suffering and that the greatest men’s minds and bodies are seared with scars. To most men, Paul’s suffering would have proven to be too much long ago, but to Paul the suffering is cloaked in the words of Jesus, and like these words, the suffering nourishes him. The suffering sands off his rough edges and makes him into a better man.
And so the wise man smiles, and he nods, and he leaves Paul — knowing, somehow, that Paul will be alright without him — and then he leaves Athens and Greece and Europe itself, to go and preach this Jesus’ philosophy, not in a religious manner, no — for still he does not believe, and probably never will — but in a political manner.
And everywhere he goes he tells the people what he has learned. He tells the people that this justice the Roman Empire has thrust upon them after conquest is not justice but “justice.” The emperor has no right to rule their fates. Not when he gained control over their fates through force alone.
And when the wise man reaches Jerusalem, the city where Jesus died, he preaches loudest, and his preaching is met by the loudest protest there, too, and after coming upon an adulteress who is about to be stoned he repeats the words of Jesus the Christ — “he who has not sinned, cast the first stone” — and the would-be executioners feel a hot shame that turns into a rage, for they know his words are true but cannot stand to believe them, and by this rage alone he is exiled and cast into the desert, and a warrant is issued for his arrest, and for forty years he wanders through the desert until he is captured and sent to Rome for his trial, to be interrogated by the kind Canaanite soldier named Thomas.
“I have heard of this Jesus,” says Thomas.
“Yes.”
“The Romans are killing his followers. They threw ten of them to the lions in the Coliseum just yesterday.”
“Yes.”
“But you are not a follower, for you do not believe in his divinity?”
“Yes, this is true: I am not a follower in that way. But I am a follower in other ways.”
“Other ways?”
“Yes.”
“So, though you claim that you are not a Christian, the emperor wants you dead. Why? I still do not understand, Abram.”
The wise man sighs. “But you do. I told you why: I preached. The message may have been political rather than religious, but I think that threatened the Romans more. You Romans kill the Christians who profess naught but their faith; imagine what the emperor thinks of one who professes the political aspects of Jesus’ teachings. Jesus was killed by the Hebrews in Jerusalem for the same reason that the Roman emperor wants me dead.”
“And what reason is that?”
“Jesus’s message is not kind to power. Nay, it is contrary to power. For it teaches that power is no substitute for legitimacy, that the strong have no more claim over this world than the weak. Indeed, this man Jesus taught that the experiences of the weak give them a strength that the ‘strong’ do not have, for through their suffering the weak are strengthened and made into better men. The weak, Thomas — they are stronger than the strong. Do you see why this message threatens the empire?”
“Yes,” Thomas says. “I see. It threatens the very bonds we use to maintain our empire.” For a time the man stares Abram in the eyes. He is a kind man, and the wise man can tell that Thomas is thinking of a way to save him, of a way to lie, to make it seem, perhaps, that they got the wrong man, that the wise man was not the right person.
This glimpse of the good in Thomas’ heart makes the wise man smile, for the first time in a long time, but he knows he will not let the warden endanger himself.
“Do not do it, Thomas. What if your lie works, and they find another man, and kill him in my place? What then? Or what if the emperor finds out about your treachery, and you and I both face crucifixion? What would happen to your family? No, I must die. But I am not afraid of death.”
Thomas reaches out a hand and puts it on the wise man’s shoulder. There are tears in his eyes as he says: “I wash my hands of this.”
The wise man thinks those words seem familiar — very familiar — and he smiles at that. “I know.”
And the next day the wise man is thrust against a cross — the Romans’ preferred method of execution — and abandoned in a lonely spot beside the sea. The pain is immense, yet he ignores the pain, he ignores it and he smells the sea salt-scented air and he feels the wind against his body and he hears the regular thrum of the waves as they lap up against the shore.
And though he is dying he feels as alive as he has ever felt.
He settles into a delirium after a day, and he dreams of the desert and of his wanderings and of the other wise men who traverse the world now and who will traverse the world in the future. And three days later his spirit expires, and Roman “justice” is served.
And the morale of this man’s story, like the morale of the god-man Jesus’s story, is this:
“Justice” is injustice.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Penname publication
Share your stories on ManyStories.com to reach more readers. Auto-tweet your stories on repeat with Signal to increase engagement.
