It was familiar yet different. The high walls of the building surrounding the plaza. A fountain, the shattered centerpiece, upon which he could climb to bring the word to the people. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of people gathering around. His message hadn’t changed, hadn’t suddenly scratched the itching ears of the people. Nor did they welcome it with open hearts and lucid minds.
This morning, they stumbled towards him as if they had nowhere else to go. The once brash spirit now broken. Empty lives, hopeless lives, searching for the answer which they had all along.
Jeremiah took the large step onto the retaining wall around the fountain. His knee creaked in pity. Righting himself, he bowed his head to the ground and prayed that God would be glorified, that he would have the courage to speak.
“Hear these words. Open your hearts and listen. This is what the Lord says: ‘Whoever stays in this city will die by the battle, famine, or plague, but whoever goes over to the Russians will live. They will escape with their lives; they will live.’ And this is what the Lord says: ‘This city will certainly be given into the hands of the army of the ruler of Russia, who will capture it.’ Do not be foolish. Do not pay attention to those who say, ‘By the strength of our might we will defeat the enemy. Or here come the armies of the Lord to fight for us. We have found favor in the sight of the Lord.’ They speak to you from the machinations of their own minds. They dream the desires of their heart and claim the Lord has told them to speak on his behalf. Does he know the one who worships gold? Does he call the unrepentant his son? Don’t listen to them or be enticed by the honey which flows from their lips. Because you followed them, we are here. Because you took their advice, the advice you preferred more than life itself, the Russians sit on our doorstep waiting to destroy us, their desire to see your blood fill the streets.”
“In God’s great mercy, a mercy none of us deserve, he has decided to preserve a remnant. He has given you the way out. Surrender, repent. Take his yoke upon your neck. Take the chains the Russians place around the wrists of you men, women, and children as they carry you off to captivity. In their land, you will find safety and life. There, you will grow and become strong until that day in which the Lord decides to bring you home.”
“But if you will not listen, if your heart remains like hardened cement, then the Lord will surely crush it, just as he crushes the buildings and the plazas and the wall which surrounds your city.”
Jeremiah waited. The usual murmur hid itself, supplanted by a superficial calm. Still, he could see it in their faces, the battle raging inside between submission and pride.
“Don’t listen to him.”
Jeremiah looked towards the voice. Three men approached against the morning light. They always seemed to come against him in threes. An artificial trinity. god the money, god the daughter, and god the unclean spirit. The last one spoke.
“He does not speak for the Lord. Look around you. God has abandoned him. Better said, God was never with him. Another false prophet seeking only to enrich himself at your expense. See his clothes, the color in his cheeks. The siege hasn’t affected him, and you have to ask yourself why.”
“May God rebuke you, Zephaniah,” Jeremiah said, “and silence your tongue. Haven’t you done enough to deceive the people?”
“Really? You’re accusing me of deceiving the people?” Zephaniah climbed onto the retaining wall no more than twenty feet away. “I’m not the one claiming the Russians will welcome us with open arms. Look outside the city wall. See the dead bodies lying all around. Does that look like open arms to you? Best case scenario, and this is according to you, we become their slaves.” He paused. “That’s what you’re really hoping for, isn’t it? What do you get out of it, I wonder?”
Jeremiah turned back to the crowd, which continued to grow larger, especially now that Zephaniah had made an appearance. “Surrender to the Russians,” he said. “Do not put the Lord your God to the test. He has promised you safety, and he will deliver. Is he human that he can lie? His word will be accomplished. But he gives this to you as a choice, the same choice he offered the Israelites under Moses. The same choice offered to our first parents and to the generation before you. Life or death. Whether you want to admit it or not, you are a slave to something. Either to God, leading to life, or to the fleeting pleasures of this world. As Zephaniah said, look around you. These are the treasures you have been pursuing all along. What benefit have they been to you? Heed the words of the Lord before everything is taken away.”
Zephaniah shook his head. Disappointment clouded his countenance. “My children. His own words condemn him. He wants you to be a nation of slaves. It won’t happen, of course. If you open the gates to the city, the Russians will not make you slaves. Well, maybe a small portion of you. Instead, they’ll send in their armies to kill all the man and rape the women and the children. What a sick, perverse man. He knows the walls have stopped the Russian attack. He knows there’s no way they can enter the city unless we open the gates for them. Ask yourself why he wants that. It’s certainly not for your benefit.”
A man stepped onto the wall. An olive-green skirt hugged his body down to mid-thigh. Long lashes and a shade of colors decorated his face. His mouth opened wide in a hearty yawn.
“Zephaniah speaks the truth,” the man said when he finished yawning. “Our armies have thwarted the Russians. Soon we will defeat them. Obviously, I can’t give you more information at this time. Just know that I and the other generals have a plan that will guarantee victory. Be patient and trust us. It won’t be much longer until we send the Russians scurrying into the hills like the slimy cockroaches they are.”
A woman called out from the crowd. “We want food, not your empty words.”
“And that you will have in plenty,” Zephaniah said. “Your pantries will overflow with bread and oil and all the luxuries your hearts desire.”
“How? We don’t even have water.”
“General Hannah’s engineers have started digging a dozen new wells in the city and has plans for another twenty. Water already flows from three of them. You’ll have so much water soon, you’ll ask them to stop.”
General Hannah, the man in the olive-green skirt, nodded in agreement. “In partnership with Mr. Shemaiah here, we’ve already begun constructing warehouses in the southern part of the city to store grain and other goods for when we crush the Russians. Have faith. Just a little longer and all this will be a distant memory.”
The usual murmur returned, buoyed by a forgotten hope, sustained by a delusion coveted enough to block out the plain truth of God. Jeremiah wanted to remain quiet, but his feverish heart opened his mouth.
“A man who doesn’t even know his own sex. Truth for him is an illusion, blown about on the wind, flowing like a river wherever it will take him. How can he claim to speak the truth of God? The wells he has dug will not overflow with water. God has shut the mouths of the fountains and the springs of the earth, just as he stopped the flow from the clouds. No more than a trickle will be found, enough to tickle your dry lips and make your stomach burn even more than it does now.”
Jeremiah’s sneer turned to sarcasm. “How nice it is to see my old friend, Jimmy Shemaiah. How long has it been? Ten years? I thought the Russians carted you off when they stole your mines and your factories. I was certain they would’ve punished you for the sin of supporting the Chinese during the Jehoiakim wars.” Jeremiah paused as though recalling a piece of information hidden in his mind. “Right. They took you to Russia where you sold them all the information you had collected on the Chinese over the years. That was worth at least as much as all the gold you owned. In return, they allowed you to keep control of your assets. That’s what you’ve been doing this whole time, isn’t it? Selling information to the Russians. That and collecting information on the Russians to sell to the Chinese. Have the Russians discovered your duplicity yet? Of course, they have. That’s why you’re here, under the assumption the walls will keep you safe. Or hoping. Your walls of last resort. If the Russians ever get their hands on you … Seriously, I’d hate to be you when that happens. And it’s going to happen. Oh, I see in your face that you have a contingency in place for that too. Truth be told, it doesn’t matter to you which side wins. Chaos brings opportunity. Death, violence, destruction simply open the door to profit. The sickness of greed. That same sickness will invade your body and destroy you from the inside out.”
“Which brings me to you, Zephaniah. The false prophet. A beast from the earth. You read Revelation and dream it is you. But you’re not even worthy of that. How dare you defy God! How dare you stand in his cathedral and profane his name! If you truly knew him, you would acknowledge his words. Instead, you devise words from your own heart and claim they come from him. Prosperity you seek. Water you promise. A lake of fire you will find.”
Zephaniah’s face flushed a dark crimson as he called down a curse from the heaven he claimed to worship. Jeremiah ignored him and walked away, ignored General Hannah’s calls of bigot and fool, ignored the disheartened jeers of a people too blinded to see the way out.
Jeremiah climbed to the top of the stairs and turned to his left. A narrow walkway split the neck-high parapets. He slumped over a little so the Russian snipers couldn’t see him as he headed down the path. Above him on specially constructed platforms, the city’s own snipers lay prostrate, eyes behind scopes searching for a target to pick off.
His shoes tapped against the cement floor, soft echoes in a hostile world. Dry, crackling coughs punctuated his footsteps with a syncopated beat. The sweat, which trickled off his skin earlier that morning, rushed down in a torrent as the gray rays of the sun struck at his face. How he had any moisture left in his body he couldn’t comprehend.
No one paid attention to him. The danger lay in front. Even the guards at the foot of the stairs did little more than give him a cursory glance. Thoughts of desertion filled their minds with the hope of a full stomach and a drink of water. A familiar presence barely registered.
Fifty paces down, the walkway took a sharp left, almost doubling back. A few steps past that point, Jeremiah found his place. Two battlements, so close they almost touched, stared over the bed of the Potomac River as it meandered to the south. Jeremiah leaned his back against the wall so he could see through the firing holes cut into the battlements. Off in the distance, he imagined the Chesapeake Bay, its silver waves teaming with life. How often he had gone there as a boy to wade in the water as his uncle pulled out basket after basket of blue crabs. Later that night, a pot would hiss as the crabs boiled in a steamy, seasoned broth. He could almost smell that broth, almost feel the sand slipping between his toes.
Everything was simpler then and he wondered. He wondered if the world was capable of changing, if he could somehow leave this city and return to that simpler place and time. If it had all been an illusion.