god.
But, in these final moments of his journey, between the tent
and cave, Jesus was a tired and disappointed man. He did not
feel much welcomed by the scrub. Its textures were harsh
and colourless. Its skies were far too large and low. He'd been
naive. He'd hoped for greater hospitality, that the path would
rid itself of stones and sweep away its thorns for him. God's
unfinished landscape would provide a way, he thought. The
scrubland would recognize his simple dress, his solemn purposes,
his modesty. Its hills would flatten. Its rocks would soften. It
would protect his naked feet. This, after all, was the path that
led to god, still at work on his creation. So the path should
become more heavenly, more freshly formed, safer at every
step. It should become an infant Galilee. The winds should
be more musical. The light should shiver and the air should
smell of offerings. But god had left the thorns and stones in
place across the scrub.
At last, in the approaches to the cliff-top where Jesus had
to find the way down to his lodgings for the night, the scrub
began to slope, eroded by flash floods and centuries of wind.
There were no plants. Here, the soil was smooth and crumbling
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and dangerous. All the loosened stones of any size had rolled
away and fallen to the scree pans on the valley floor. Somewhere
along the precipice, the latest rock fell free. It made its
noisy, tumbling farewell to the slope, and bounced into the
weightless silence of its fall. Any nervous man like Jesus,
only used to Galilean heights and daunted by the receding
ground, would feel afraid of being like that stone. He should
not, therefore, have felt ashamed of getting down on his hands
and knees and edging forwards on all-fours, like a sheep, towards
the fragile brink of the cliff. But Jesus was ashamed, and
frightened, too. Frightened that he would end up amongst
the scree. Frightened of the night ahead. Frightened of his
quarantine.
This was the final opportunity for Jesus to turn around and
go back to the tent. It would not be hard to justify such a short
retreat - his religious duty was to help a dying man. Perhaps he
ought to settle for the easy caves up in the hills. That might have
been god's intention all along. But Jesus was too nervous to stand
up and flee. He felt like Y ehoch, perching on the temple roof,
calling out for angels and for ropes, because he could not tell if
he should put his trust in god or men. The optimist and innocent
who had set off that morning from the shepherd's hut had
now become a pessimist. Jesus had persuaded himself earlier that
day that creation was continuing in these hills. Look at the
lack of trees, he'd told himself, the thinness of plants and grasses.
God would be at work still. This was the edge of god's
unfinished universe. But what on earth could god complete on
this despairing precipice? Where were his fingerprints? What
work was there to do? Every Galilean knew that vegetation was
the fruit of god's union with the earth. There was no vegetation
on these slopes. Perhaps there was no god either. Perhaps this
was the devil's realm. The stones were sinners. And the scree
was hell.
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Jesus hung on with his naked hands and feet. He was ashamed.
His neighbours and his family were watching him. They were
his witnesses. 'Ah, yes,' they'd say. 'He's fallen now, down on
his knees. Look at him crawl.'
He had no choice. He hung his head over the precipice, and
looked from left to right, for a descending path, and any evidence
of caves. The light was poor, but he was lucky. He could not
see his cave, or any cave, but he could see a sloping rock similar
to the one which formed the front deck to his chosen sanctuary.
The perfect perch for eagles, and for angels, he had said. Except
there were no eagles nor any angels, just ravens and the falling
debris of the cliff.
One of the ravens landed close to Jesus, turned its head a dozen
times, inspecting him for food, and then flew off, calling out its
disappointment - tok-tok, tok-tok, tok-tok. Its voice was unmistakable, more like a carpenter's than a bird' s. He'd made the noise himself a thousand times - the impact of a tool on wood. But,
although he tried his best, Jesus could not take it as a sign that god
was calling him. He had expected signs all day, it's true. Some shaft
of sunshine, picking out a rock. Some burning bush. A distant
voice, perhaps, to tell him how he ought to reach his cave. A white
dove, yes; or the elated song of a warbler might carry messages
from god. But tok-tok-tok? God would be more eloquent than
that. Jesus had to wait for quite a while, clinging like an insect to
his slope, before a better sign was offered him. A steady flight of
storks, corning up from Egypt to the north - the Sea of Galilee,
perhaps - were passing overhead. A sign of spring. One dropped
below its companions and flew along the massive, sheer cliffs of
the valley. Its white shoulders and body were briefly highlighted
by the sun against the greys and browns. Then it shrank away so
far that it became a duck, a dove, a fading speck of white, a mote
of sawdust in the window light. The moment that it disappeared,
Jesus told himself, would be the moment that he moved.
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So Jesus took his courage from the stork to edge along the
cliff on hands and knees, looking for a way down to his cave. It
was not difficult. It was not long before the ground grew rougher
underfoot and underhand. There was a rockfall, where the land
had split and slipped, like a broken crust of bread. Jesus started
to climb down. The marl was soft enough to crumble between
his fingers. There were struggling signs of god's creation, at last.
A few opportunist plants - morning star, hyssop, saltwood - had
taken root in the crevices and on the leeward side of rocks. They
lent their odour to the climb and left their muffled blessings on
his palms whenever he took hold of them. Hyssop was familiar,
a herb for eggs and fish, but now it was the smell of vertigo and
fear. When the rockfall steepened, Jesus descended on his thighs,
facing outwards. The ground was loose but firm enough to take
his weight. He did not trust his feet. They were already tom and
bleeding from the walk and now were further scratched and
battered by the earth. He tried to put as much weight as he could
on to his hands and thighs as he went down below the level of
the slope on to the precipice. He had to hurry. It was almost
dusk. The cliffs were facing east. The sunlight ended sharply.
He was climbing on the dark side of the world, his back pressed
hard against the earth.
He reached his lodgings for the night more easily than he had
expected. The route was steep but well provided with handholds
and platforms for his feet. His fear of heights and falling rocks
made him quick and nimble for a change. He was propelled. He
almost found the climbing pleasurable. He was the boy he'd
never been.
The entrance was much larger than he'd thought. The cave
was deep. There was no sign of life, not even any bird lime on
the rocks, or sand-fish burrows. No screaming bats. No perching
angels. He called out from the rocky platform at the cave's
mouth. The echo of his nervous greeting came back twice. 'Is
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anybody there ody there ody there?' He wept, of course. What
young man, alone in such a wilderness, wouldn't weep to hear
his own voice mocking him and reassuring him? No echo would
be worse. He couldn't light a fire or lamp. There wasn't any
food or drink to comfort him, but he had eaten anyway, in the
merchant's tent and in the shepherd's hut. Two meals that day.
He couldn't think what he should do. Give thanks? Protect the
entrance of the cave with stones? It was too cold to sit outside
and watch the stars come out. He hadn't brought a cloak to wrap
around himself So he found a pocket of warm air, out of the
draughts, and curled up on the dry clay in the cave, in his thin
clothes. He made a pillow of his open palm, still smelling of the
hyssop, and protected his body with his elbows and his knees as
if he thought he might be kicked by demons. Would there be
scorpions or snakes? Would there be nightmares? He closed his
eyes. He brought his lids down on his fear. He put his trust in
god; an optimist again. He could rest. He could rely on god's
provision, yes. The travelling was over. He fell asleep, almost at
once.
Sleep is a medicine. When he woke up on his first day of
quarantine, his spirit was repaired, as was his confidence. There
was no walking to be done that day. He did not have to climb.
He only had to shake the stiffness from his limbs and go outside
to meet the day. The rosy epaulettes of light on the peaks of
Moab which Marta was admiring at that same moment from
her own cave entrance, seemed heavenly to Jesus. He sat crosslegged on his angel perch. He could hear the bluster of a wind, blowing on the cliff-tops and the hills, but not descending to his
cave. God was taking care of him. Jesus would explore the cave
when it was fully light outside, but for the moment he simply
waited for the epaulettes to spread into a cloak, and for the cloak
to throw its warmth across his shoulders. Time was slow, of
course. He filled it with prayer, and thinking of his parents
8o
watching him pray. They couldn't come and shake him now.
There was nothing else for Jesus to do, except to simplify
his life. Repentance, meditation, prayer. Those were the joys
of solitude. They had sustained the prophets for a thousand
years. And they would be his daily companions. He started
rocking with each word of prayer, putting all his body into
it, speaking it out loud, concentrating on the sound, so that
no part of him could be concerned with lesser matters or be
reminded of the fear, the hunger and the chill. He seemed to
find his adolescent rhapsodies. The prayers were in command
of him. He shouted out across the valley, happy with the noise
he made. The common words lost hold of sound. The consonants
collapsed. He called on god to join him in the cave with all the
noises that his lips could make. He called with all the voices in
his throat. He clacked his tongue against his mouth, Tok-tok
tok-tok tok-tok.
He must have recited a hundred prayers that morning, before
the sun obliged and warmed him through. His prayers brought
up the sun. His prayers suppressed his appetite. His prayers picked
out the sunlight on the dead and silver sea and hardened it. It
turned it into jewellery. The water was as solid as a silver plate.
It rose from the distant valley into the mid-air haze. Jesus had
to look at it through half-closed eyes, it was so bright. The more
he looked, the more transformed he felt. He could have taken
this to be the natural way of water and light. But Jesus had not
come this far to witness only godless routines of the sun and sky
and sea. He had to take each shift of light, each colouring, each
shadow of a bird to be the evidence of god. He had to persuade
himself, before the forty days were up, that he'd been awarded
a brief view of god's kingdom. Let the silver plate be paradise.
Let god be calling out to give to him his new commandments,
as he had given all his laws to Jews in this same wilderness. What
would his parents and his neighbours say when he went back to
8 1
preach the word of god? They would not shake his shoulders,
send his brothers to distract him, use the stick. They would
rejoice in him. He could congratulate himself, and did. He was
shoeless, homeless, without food. He'd slept on naked ground.
But he was at last without fear or sorrow. 'Am I not free?' he
asked himself. 'Am I not blessed?'
Finally it was too warm to sit out in the sun, and he was
trursty. He put a pebble in his mouth. He went back to the cave
and slept again, just inside the entrance. He dreamed he was a .
common fly and climbing down a crust ofbread. It broke away.
He fell with crumbs ofbread between his legs. His wings weren't
any use. He fell awake. Flies on his face were feeding on the
mucus of his nose and eyes and lips. There was indeed a noise
of falling without wings. A few stones dropped outside his cave.
A little further along the cliff a new landslip was underway. God's