Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights by Ryu Mitsuse

Author:Ryu Mitsuse [Mitsuse, Ryu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: story, cookie429
ISBN: 9781421549316
Publisher: VIZ Media LLC
Published: 2012-11-20T00:00:00+00:00

High in the sky over Mount Zion and the ridges of Har Hatzofim across the wide Jordan River Valley, gigantic thunderheads had been gathering since morning. But the sun still shone on the near side of the river, suffusing the region’s famous cliffs of white granite with blinding light.

A right turn off the road that leads to the Shushan Gate brings the traveler to a barren, rocky hillside called Golgotha. Judas was standing where the two ways met, looking down at the Jordan Valley below. Several steep, jagged paths were cut into the stepped faces of the cliffs, looking like scars left by lightning bolts. The small collection of dingy dwellings near the center of the valley was the village of Jericho. Beyond that, the Jordan River curved like a silvery snake beneath a shimmering mirage.

Following the bends of the river with his eyes, Judas gazed across the vista to his right to where the Jordan swelled suddenly to become the Dead Sea. Half of that body of water glimmered a rich, brilliant blue, while the other half sat in the shadow cast by the protruding cliff of Tel Bet Yerah.

Once, when Judas was a boy, he had seen something sunken in the depths of the deep water beneath the cliffs—an ancient, empty city. There were buildings of stone there, with square windows cut in their walls; an arcade leading to a wide plaza; even trees turned to stone. All of it seemed close enough to touch were he to reach over the side of the boat. He’d asked many people why there was a city at the bottom of the Dead Sea but had never received a satisfactory answer. Some merely shook their heads fearfully and declined to speak of it, while others had made the Jewish hand gesture for warding off demons and had either promptly departed or driven him away. It was only much later that he had learned of a legend, passed down by the prophets, that identified the city under the waves as part of Sodom or Gomorrah, sunk by no lesser power than the wrathful God Himself.

When Judas was around thirty years of age, a powerful earthquake had struck the region, destroying many buildings in Jerusalem and in other towns and villages on either side of the Jordan. After that, the city at the bottom of the sea could no longer be seen. Where it had been, a large pile of boulders covered the seafloor. Judas harbored doubts about whether the lost ruin really was the remnant of Sodom and Gomorrah. All the legends were in agreement that God in His wrath had rained fire and sulfur down from Heaven, and the two towns had been swallowed by the earth. Judas took this to be a clear indication that, at some point far in the past, a severe earthquake had shaken the Jordan River Valley, causing a volcano to erupt and fissures to open in the ground. Yet the underwater city in Judas’s memory had appeared whole and unblemished.

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