The Last Temptation of Christ (11 page)

“My sister, my sister,” he murmured, and he looked at it with compassion.

Leaving the butterfly behind him to become warm, he set out once more and immediately heard the muffled tread of the two bare feet over the moist soil, a few paces in back of him. In the beginning, when he first left Nazareth, her sound was very faint: it seemed to come from far away. Little by little the feet had gained courage and drawn closer. Soon, the son of Mary thought with a shudder, they would catch him up. “Lord, O Lord,” he murmured, “grant that I may reach the monastery quickly, before she pounces on me.”

The sun now invaded the plain, beating down upon birds, beasts and men. A heterogeneous rumble mounted from the soil; on the mountainsides goats and sheep began to stir and shepherds to sound their pipes: the world grew tame and civilized. In a few moments, as soon as he reached that tall poplar ahead of him on his left, he would see Cana, the merry village he loved so much. While he was still a beardless stripling—before God dug his claws into him—how many times he and his mother had come here to the boisterous festivals! How many times he had joined the others in admiring the girls from all the surrounding villages as they danced beneath this tall, thickly foliaged poplar and the happy earth trembled under their stamping feet. But once, when he was twenty years old and stood gasping for breath under this poplar, holding a rose in his hand ...

He shuddered. Suddenly he saw her of the thousand secret kisses standing once more before him. Hidden in her bosom were the sun and the moon, one to the right, the other to the left; and day and night rose and fell behind the transparent bodice of her dress.

“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” he cried. “I’ve been dedicated to God; I’m on my way to meet him in the desert!” Hurrying along, he passed the poplar. Suddenly Cana unfolded before him: the squat houses all anointed with whitewash, the square drying platforms, brilliantly gilded with the maize and huge gourds which had been spread out under the sun. The young girls, their bare feet dangling over the edges, were stringing red peppers along cotton thread, to decorate their homes.

Lowering his eyes, he rushed by this trap of Satan’s as fast as he could. He did not want to see anyone or to be seen by anyone. Behind him the two bare feet now stamped loudly over the cobbles: they were rushing too.

The sun had mounted; it now covered the earth. Singing merrily, the reapers swung their sickles and mowed. The handfuls quickly became armfuls, bundles, then stacks which towered above the threshing floors. As he proceeded, the son of Mary hastily wished the landowners a good harvest: “Each ear big enough to fill a sack!”

Cana had vanished behind the olive groves. The shadows snuggled close to the roots of the trees; it was almost noon. And as the son of Mary rejoiced in everything around him, keeping his mind fixed on God, the sweet smell of newly baked bread suddenly hit his nostrils. All at once he felt hungry, and the moment he did so, his entire body jumped for joy. How many years he had felt hunger and yet never experienced this holy yearning for bread! But now ...

His nostrils sniffed the air. Following the aroma, he strode across a ditch, climbed a fence, entered a vineyard and discovered a squat but beneath a hollow olive tree. Smoke ascended, untwisting as it passed the thatched roof. An old lady was bent over, wrestling with a small brick oven which stood in the hut’s entranceway. She was quick-moving, had a nose like a skewer and eyes without eyelashes. At her side was a dog, black with yellow spots. He had placed his front paws on the oven and opened wide a deep, famished mouth filled with teeth. As soon as he heard footsteps in the vineyard he barked and charged the intruder. Surprised, the old woman turned. When she saw the youth her tiny eyes gleamed. Delighted to see a man enter her solitude, she stopped work, the wooden shovel in her hand.

“Welcome,” she said. “Hungry, Where have you come from, with God’s grace?”

“From Nazareth.”

“Hungry?” the old woman asked again, laughing. “Your nostrils are twitching like a greyhound’s.”

“Yes, I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

But the old lady was deaf and did not hear.

“What?” she said. “Speak louder.”

“I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive you—why? Hunger isn’t anything to be ashamed of, my fine lad, nor is thirst, nor love. They’re all God’s—so come closer and don’t be ashamed.”

She laughed again, revealing her one precious tooth.

“Here you’ll find bread and water. Love—farther on, in Magdala.”

She grasped a loaf which she had placed with the others on the stone bench next to the oven. “Look, this is the loaf we reserve for passers-by each time we empty the oven. We call it the grasshopper’s bread. It’s not mine; it’s yours. Cut a slice and eat.”

The son of Mary felt calmed. He sat down on the root of the ancient olive tree and began to eat. How tasty this bread was, how refreshing the water, how sweet the two olives which the old lady gave him to accompany his bread. They had slender pits and were as fat and fleshy as apples! He chewed tranquilly and ate, feeling that his body and soul had joined and become one now, that they were receiving the bread, olives and water with one mouth, rejoicing, the both of them, and being nourished.

The old lady leaned against the oven and admired him.

“You certainly were hungry,” she said with a laugh. “Eat. You’re young, you’ve got a long road ahead of you still, and no end of troubles. Eat, make yourself strong so that you’ll be able to endure.”

She broke off the corner of another loaf and gave him two more olives. Her kerchief slipped from her head, revealing her balding scalp. She hastily tied it up again.

“Where are you headed, with the grace of God?” she asked.

“To the desert.”

“Where? Speak louder!”

“To the desert.”

The old woman contorted her toothless mouth; her eyes grew fierce. “To the monastery?” she screamed with unexpected anger. “Why? What business do you have there? Don’t you pity your youth?”

He did not speak. The old woman shook her bald head and hissed like a snake. “You want to find God, do you?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” said the youth, his voice extremely thin.

The old lady kicked the dog, which was tangled up in her reed-like legs, and approached the youth.

“Ooo, unlucky devil,” she shouted, “don’t you know that God is found not in monasteries but in the homes of men! Wherever you find husband and wife, that’s where you find God; wherever children and petty cares and cooking and arguments and reconciliations, that’s where God is too. Don’t listen to those eunuchs. Sour grapes! Sour grapes! The God I’m telling you about, the domestic one, not the monastic: that’s the true God. He’s the one you should adore. Leave the other to those lazy, sterile idiots in the desert!”

The more the old lady spoke the more inflamed she became. She talked and screeched, had her fling of revenge, grew calm.

“Excuse me, my brave lad,” she said, touching the young man’s shoulder, “but once I had a son, a fine one like yourself. He went out of his mind one morning, opened the door and left to go to the monastery in the desert, to the Healers—a plague on them and may they never heal anyone as long as they live! Well, I lost him and now I fill the oven and empty it—to feed whom? My children? My grandchildren? I’m a withered, fruitless tree.”

She stopped for a moment to wipe her eyes, then began again. “For years I lifted my hands to God. Why was I born?’ I shouted. ,I had one son; why did you take him from me?’ I shouted and shouted, but who could expect him to hear! Only once did I see the heavens open. It was at midnight, on the top of the prophet Elijah’s mountain. I heard a thunderous voice: ‘Shout yourself hoarse, for all I care.’ Then the heavens closed again; and that was the last I ever called to God.”

The son of Mary got up. He held out his hand to say goodbye to the old woman, but she drew hers back. Once more she began to hiss like a snake. “So it’s the desert, is it! You too have an appetite for sand, eh? But where are your eyes, my fine lad? Don’t you see vineyards, the sun, women? Go on, I tell you, go to Magdala—that’s where you belong! Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? God says, ‘I don’t want fasting and prayer, I want meat!’ In other words, he wants you to produce him children!”

“Farewell,” the young man said. “May God repay you for the bread you’ve fed me.”

“May God repay you too,” said the old lady, mollified; “may he repay you for the good you have done me. It’s been years since a man stopped at my broken-down hovel, and if anyone did pass by, he was always old. ...”

He strode back again through the vineyard, jumped over the fence and came out onto the main road.

“I can’t stand the sight of men,” he murmured. “I don’t want to see them; even the bread they give you is poison. Only one road leads to God: the one I chose today. It passes amidst men without touching them, and comes out in the desert. Oh, when will I arrive!”

His words had still not faded away when laughter broke out behind him. He turned, startled. A mouthless laugh convulsed the air, a hissing, rancorous, malevolent laugh.

“Adonai! Adonai!” was the shout which escaped his constricted larynx. His hair standing on end, he gazed at the guffawing air; then, in a raving frenzy, he started to run, and immediately heard the sound of the two bare feet which were running behind him.

“No matter where they are, they will catch me soon; no matter where they are, they will catch me soon,” he murmured, and ran.

The women were still mowing. The men carried the bundles to the threshing floors; others, farther on, had started to winnow. A warm breeze caught the chaff and sprinkled the earth with golden powder, leaving the heavy grain to pile up on the threshing floor. Passers-by took a fistful of wheat, kissed it and wished the landowners a similar harvest the following year.

Sitting between two hills in the distance, imposing, newly built, full of statues, theaters and painted women, was Tiberias, the idolatress. The sight of it filled the son of Mary with fright. Once, when he was still a child, he had come here with his uncle the rabbi, who had been called to rid a well-born Roman lady of her devils. It was obviously the devil of the bath which had mounted her, for she used to go out into the streets stark naked and waylay the passers-by. The rabbi and his nephew entered her palace at a time when the noble lady was again governed by her demon. She was running toward the street door, the slaves hot in her pursuit. The rabbi put out his staff and stopped her, but the moment she saw the boy, she pounced on him. The son of Mary screamed and fainted; and ever since then, whenever he recalled this shameless place, he trembled.

“This city is damned by God,” the rabbi used to tell him. “When you pass this way, go quickly, keep your eyes on the ground and your mind on death; or look up at the sky and keep your mind on God. If you want my blessing, whenever you travel to Capernaum, take another route.”

The hussy laughed now in the sunlight; people poured in and out of her gates, both on foot and on horseback; flags with the two-headed eagle waved over her towers; bronze arms flashed. Once the son of Mary had seen a mare’s carcass stretched out in a green bog outside Nazareth. It was puffed up, with the skin stretched tight, like a drum. Armies of crabs and dung beetles paraded in and out of its open belly, which was full of guts and filth; a cloud of immense gold-green horseflies buzzed in the air above, and two crows sucked away, their sharp bills thrust into the large eyes, just below the long lashes. The carcass was resplendent. Thickly inhabited, it seemed to have come back to life: you thought it was rolling delightedly in the springtime grass, completely content, with its four shod hoofs stretched out toward the sky.

“Such—like the mare’s carcass—such is Tiberias,” murmured the son of Mary, unable to remove his eyes from the glittering city. “Such, also, are Sodom and Gomorrah; such the sinful soul of man.

A vigorous, still-juicy old man went by astride his donkey. He saw Jesus and stopped.

“What are you gaping at, lad?” he asked. “Don’t you know her? She’s our new princess: Tiberias the whore. Greeks, Romans, Bedouins, Chaldeans, Gypsies and Jews mount her, and she’s always ready for more. She’s always ready for more—do you hear what I say? Two and two make four!”

He removed a handful of walnuts from his saddle bag and treated Jesus. “You look like a fine upstanding fellow,” he said, “and a poor one. Take these to munch along the road and don’t forget to say, God bless old Zebedee of Capernaum!”

His forked beard was fully white, his lips thick and gluttonous he had a short bull neck and black, quick-moving rapacious eyes. This squat fat body must have eaten, drunk and kissed amply in its time, and it was still far from satisfied!

A great hairy colossus came along. His shirt was open down the front, his knees bare; in his hand he held a hooked shepherd’s staff. He halted, all wrought up, and without greeting the old man, turned to the son of Mary. “Your Honor mightn’t be the son of the Carpenter, from Nazareth? You mightn’t be the one who builds crosses and crucifies us?”

Two old women who were mowing in the field opposite heard the conversation and approached.

“I ...” said the son of Mary, “I ...” and he started to leave.

“Where do you think you’re going?” shouted the colossus, seizing him by the arm. “You don’t get away so easily! Cross-maker, traitor—I’ll murder you!”

But the vigorous old man grabbed the crook and snatched it out of the shepherd’s hand.

“Wait a minute, Philip,” he said. “Listen to what an old man has to say. Now will you please answer me this: Everything that happens in this world is willed by God, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Zebedee, everything.”

“All right, then: it’s God’s will that this fellow build crosses. Leave him alone. And a word to the wise: it’s best not to meddle in the Lord’s affairs. Two and two make four.”

The son of Mary, meanwhile, had extricated himself from the bumpkin’s pincers and gone off at a run. The two old reapers screeched after him, shaking their sickles maniacally.

“Zebedee,” said the colossus, “let’s both go and wash our hands, because we touched the cross-maker; let’s go wash our mouths too, because we spoke to him.”