The Liars' Gospel by Naomi Alderman

apparently faintly embarrassed, and says nothing.
    He thinks: woman, I have felt the grip of your cunt.
    But before he can find something else to say—something more uncomprehending, perhaps, or the thing he wants to say that she
     would not understand: did you know that you have just fucked a dead man?—she pulls her scarf over her head and hurries away.
    At the top of the marble steps leading back into the street, a maiden is holding a wide flat dish. Her arms soon struggle
     with the heavy heaping of coins that worshippers place there as they leave. Iehuda finds a small coin for her and steps back
     down into the street.
    Two older women pass him as they leave.
    “She was Assyrian,” mutters one to the other, “the one who cut herself. I’ve heard about their rites.”
    The other woman, dressed neatly and with the hairstyle of a respectable matron, sniffs and frowns. “A lot of fuss,” she says.
     “What’s wrong with a pigeon?”
      
    He smells the banquet before he sees it: the sweet sticky smell of spilled wine. The smell of pomades, too, of the fragrant
     oils with which Calidorus and his friends anoint themselves before a feast. It is the smell of money, copiously spent.
    He is late for the party. This is a mistake. He had not realized how long the temple service had gone on, he had stumbled
     back home dazed and would be grateful for a bath and a sleep. But although no one chides him, the anxiety of the slaves shows
     that he has made a bad error. One of the men hurriedly washes him with a wet cloth, another dresses him in a fresh robe and
     tries to touch his hair with the perfume. He grabs the man’s wrist as he approaches with the stone vial.
    “No,” he says.
    The slave, who has tended to him a hundred times, looks puzzled but places the perfume vial back on the table. “My master
     is waiting,” he says.
    “Waiting” is something of an exaggeration. The feast had begun without Iehuda. In the dining room, six men are reclining on
     upholstered couches arranged around a low table. The table is well furnished. The men have silver cups of wine mixed with
     honey. There are dates, olives, bread, white cheese with herbs, dishes of lentils with fruit and in the center a huge ocean-fish
     with sliced citrons, dill and parsley. The men are drunk already and the meal is not even halfway over.
    “Ah, Judas”—Calidorus pronounces his name in the Greek fashion—“we were beginning to think you had forgotten about us entirely.”
    There is acid in his tone.
    “Never,” says Iehuda. “I was detained by some business in the market, that is all. My apologies, gentlemen.”
    Calidorus eyes him suspiciously.
    “Business? I thought”—he puts on a laugh—“that all the business you would ever have is been and gone.”
    “My apologies,” says Iehuda.
    It is time for him to perform.
    He is not exactly a guest at the banquet, just as he has not exactly been a guest in Calidorus’s house these past months.
     Not a slave, no certainly not that, but neither precisely a friend. He has been treated well, allowed to roam as he please,
     fed and supplied generously with wine, given clothes and two rooms of his own and even writing instruments and certain books.
     But there have been these parties. His presence has been requested in a way which is slightly firmer than an invitation. He
     has begun to wonder what might happen if he refused one of these generous offers of “an evening with some friends.”
    He takes a stance in the center of the room. The other men hush each other loudly, one spitting into the fish with an excessively
     enthusiastic “shhhhh.” In a dark corner of the room, Iehuda notices, two slaves are standing almost motionless.
    Calidorus introduces him with the usual flourish.
    “Behold the man before you,” he says, “once a follower and close confidant of a man some called the King of the Jews, but
     now a guest in my house. Since the subject of debate tonight is the gods, whether