The Last Temptation of Christ (41 page)

“Yes,” Mary replied, closing her eyes.

They talked and sighed. Jesus, meanwhile, was sitting up, though still in a deep sleep. He felt that he was not asleep at all but, rather, standing body and soul in the Jordan, refreshed. The desert sand was being removed from his body and the virtues and vices of mankind from his soul—leaving it again virgin. Suddenly it seemed to him in his sleep that he had come out of the Jordan, taken a green, untrodden path and entered a dense orchard full of blossoms and fruit. And it seemed he was no longer himself, Jesus the son of Mary of Nazareth, but rather Adam, the first man to be created. He had issued from God’s hands at precisely that moment—his flesh was still fresh clay—and had lain down on the flowering grass to dry off in the sun so that his bones might congeal, color come to his face, and the seventy-two joints of his body tighten and enable him to stand up and walk. While he lay and ripened under the sun, birds fluttered over his head, flew from tree to tree, promenaded on the springtime grass. They conversed among themselves, twittered, looked at this new creature who lay on the grass, examined him with curiosity. Each had his say and then continued on; and he, versed in their language, rejoiced to hear them.

The peacock, proudly fanning out its feathers, strolled up and down, threw oblique, seductive glances at this Adam stretched on the ground, and explained to him: “I used to be a hen, but I loved an angel and became a peacock. Is there any bird more beautiful than I am? None!” The turtledove flew from tree to tree, lifted its throat to heaven and cried, “Love! Love! Love!” And the thrush: “Among all the birds, only I sing and keep warm in the thickest of frosts.” The swallow: “If not for me, the trees would never blossom.” The cock: “If not for me, morning would never come.” The lark: “At dawn when I fly up into the sky to sing, I say goodbye to my children because I never know if I shall return from my song still alive.” The nightingale: “Don’t look at me as I am now, in my poor clothes. I too had large gleaming wings, but I turned them into song.” And a long-nosed blackbird came and clung to the shoulder of the first-created man, bent over to his ear and spoke to him softly, as though entrusting a great secret to him: “The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent, and identical: both green, both beautiful. Take care, Adam! Take care! Take care!”

Exactly then, at dawn, with the blackbird’s song in his mind, Jesus awoke.

GREAT THINGS happen when God mixes with man. Without man, God would have no mind on this Earth to reflect upon his creatures intelligibly and to examine, fearfully yet impudently, his wise omnipotence. He would have on this Earth no heart to pity the concerns of others and to struggle to beget virtues and cares which God either did not want, or forgot, or was afraid to fashion. He breathed upon man, however, giving him the power and audacity to continue creation.

But man, without God, born as he is unarmed, would have been obliterated by hunger, fear and cold; and if he survived these, he would have crawled like a slug midway between the lions and lice; and if with incessant struggle he managed to stand on his hind legs, he would never have been able to escape the tight, warm, tender embrace of his mother the monkey. ... Reflecting on this, Jesus felt more deeply than he had ever felt before that God and man could become one.

He had set out in the early morning along the road to Jerusalem. God was to his left and to his right. He could touch him with his elbows. They were traveling together, both with the identical concern. The world had gone astray. Instead of ascending to heaven it was descending to hell. The two of them together, God and the Son of God, would have to toil to bring it once more onto the correct road. That was why Jesus hurried so. He ate up the road with long strides, anxious to meet his companions so that the struggle could begin. The sun, rising from the Dead Sea, the birds struck by the new light and singing, the trembling leaves of the trees, the white road which rolled to the walls of Jerusalem and drew him with it—all were shouting at him, “Hurry! Hurry! We are perishing!”

“I know, I know,” Jesus answered. “I know, and I am coming!”

The same morning, just after dawn, the companions were sliding along, next to the walls of Jerusalem’s still-deserted lanes; not all together, but scattered in twos—Peter with Andrew, Jacob with John, and Judas by himself in the lead. Afraid, they ran, glancing out of the corners of their eyes in every direction to see if they were being followed. The fortress gate of David rose up before them. They took the first alley on the left and stole into the tavern of Simon the Cyrenian.

The fat, stoop-shouldered innkeeper was still half asleep, having just risen from his bed of straw. His eyes and nose were red and swollen, for he had sipped wine with his drunken patrons until all hours of the night, had sung, brawled, and gone to bed terribly late. Now, sluggish and in a bad humor, he was cleaning the counter, sponging away the remains of the celebration. Though on his feet, he was still not awake: it seemed to him that he had begun in a dream to clean the counter, sponge in hand. But as he labored between slumber and wakefulness, he heard panting men enter his tavern. He turned. His eyes still smarted, his mouth was bitter, his beard full of the shells of roasted pumpkin seeds.

“Damn it, who’s there?” he growled hoarsely. “Leave me alone, will you! You’ve come in bright and early to eat and drink, eh? Well, I’m not in the mood. Scram!”

But his shouting gradually woke him up, and little by little he began to recognize his old friend Peter and the other Galileans. He came forward, examined them closely, and burst out laughing. “Bah, what snouts do I see here! Stick your tongues back in your mouths, boys. Grab your belly buttons before they burst from fear. Aren’t you a proud lot, my brave Galileans!”

“For God’s sake, Simon, don’t stir up the whole world with your shouting,” Peter answered him, putting his hand over Simon’s mouth. “Close the door. The king killed John the Baptist. Haven’t you realized that yet? He cut off his head and put it on a platter.

“He did well by him. The Baptist chewed off his ears with this business about his sister-in-law. Who cares! He’s the king, let him do what he likes. And afterward—just between friends—he chewed off my ears too with his ‘Repent! Repent!’ Bah, I just want to be left alone!”

“But they say he’s going to kill all the baptized—put them to the sword. And we’re baptized. Don’t you understand?”

“Who told you to get baptized, blockheads! Serves you right!”

“But you were baptized too, wine jug!” Peter scolded him. “You told us yourself. So, why scream at us?”

“That wasn’t the same thing, you make-believe fishmonger. I’m not baptized. You call that baptism? I dove in the water, went for a swim. Everything the fake prophet chanted went in one ear and out the other, as it does with anyone who has any sense. But you, you morons ... These quacks tell you they can milk a billy goat into a sieve, and you’re the very first to believe them. They command you to dive into the water and—pluff! in you go and catch your death of pneumonia. They say not to kill your fleas on the Sabbath—it’s a very great sin. So you don’t kill them, and they kill you. Don’t pay the head tax! You don’t pay, and snap! off goes your head. Serves you right! Sit down now and we’ll have a drink. You need steadying down and I waking up!”

Two fat barrels loomed black in the recesses of the tavern. On one was painted a cock in red oils; on the other, in gray-black, a pig. He filled a pitcher of wine from the barrel with the cock, found six glasses and plunged them into a tub of filthy water in order to clean them. The smell of the wine hit him, and he awoke.

A blind man appeared at the tavern door. Putting his staff between his legs, he began to tune an ancient lute while coughing dryly and spitting to clear his throat. This was Eliakim, who had been a camel-driver in his youth. One day at noon, however, while he was traversing the desert, he saw a naked woman washing herself in a pit of water under a date tree. Instead of turning his face away, the saucy fellow pinned his eyes on the beautiful Bedouin. It was just his luck that her husband was squatting behind a rock and had lighted a fire for cooking. Seeing the camel-driver approach his wife and devour her nudity with his gaze, he rushed out with two live coals and extinguished them in the offender’s eyes. From that day on, the unfortunate Eliakim threw himself into psalm and song. He went the rounds of Jerusalem’s taverns and homes with his lute, sometimes hymning the kindness of God, sometimes singing the nudity of women. He would receive a piece of dry bread, a handful of dates, a couple of olives, and then continue on his way.

He tuned his lute, cleared his throat, raised his voice, and with melismatic elaboration began to sing his favorite psalm:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great

  
mercy;

And according to the multitude of your compassions,

  
blot out my iniquity.

At that moment the innkeeper appeared with the pitcher of wine and the wineglasses. He heard the psalmody and went wild. “Enough! Enough!” he exploded. “You’re another one who chews off my ears. Always the same tune: ‘Have mercy on me ... have mercy on me ...’ Go to hell! Bah, was I the one who sinned? Was I the one who lifted his eyes to see someone else’s wife at her bath? God gave us eyes so that we should keep them closed—don’t you understand that yet? Well, serves you right. Go on, get out of here. Go bother someone else!”

The blind man once more took up his staff, squeezed the lute under his arm, and departed without breathing a word.

“ ‘Have mercy on me, O God ... have mercy on me, O God ...’ ” trilled the irritated innkeeper. “David made eyes at other people’s wives; this eyeless idiot did the same—and we’re the ones who have to suffer for it. ... O God, I just want to be left alone!”

He finally filled the glasses. They drank. He refilled his own and downed it.

“I’m off now to put a lamb’s head into the oven for you. Grade A! A mother would steal it from the mouth of her babe!” He flew into the yard, where there was a small oven which he had built all by himself, brought twigs and vine branches, lighted the oven, thrust in the pan with the lamb’s head, then returned to his company. He was anxious for wine and talk.

But the companions were not in the mood. Crowded together by the fire, they would mumble a few words halfheartedly, then once more become mute. It was as though they were walking over burning coals. They stared at the door, anxious to leave. Judas got up and went and stood on the threshold. He detested the sight of these cowards who were all upside down with fear. Look how they had run, how fast they had reached Jerusalem from the Jordan; look how they’d gone, their hearts in their mouths, and burrowed into this out-of-the-way tavern! And now, their ears sticking up like rabbits’, they trembled and stood on tiptoe, ready to flee. ... To hell with you, brave Galileans, he said to himself. Thank you, God of Israel, for not fashioning me in their image. I was born in the desert; I’m made of Bedouin granite, not of soft Galilean soil. Every one of you fawned on him and was lavish with oaths and kisses; while now—“Don’t fail me, legs!”—all you want is to save your own hides. But I—the savage, the devil, the cutthroat—I shall not abandon him. I shall wait here until he returns from the Jordan desert, in order to see what he has to say; and then I shall make my decision. I don’t care about my own hide. Only one thing torments me, and that’s the suffering of Israel.

He heard a low-voiced argument within the tavern. He turned.

“I say we should go back to Galilee where there’s security,” said Peter. “Don’t forget our lake, boys!” He sighed. He saw his green boat flowing over the blue surge, and his heart swelled. He saw the pebbles, the oleanders, the nets loaded with fish. Tears came to his eyes. “Let’s go, lads,” he said, “come on, let’s go!”

“We gave him our word we’d wait for him in this tavern,” said Jacob. “It’s only right we keep our promise.”

“We can arrange matters,” suggested Peter, “by instructing the Cyrenian to tell him, if he comes, that—”

“No, no!” Andrew objected. “How can we forsake him in this wild city? We’ll wait for him here.”

“I say we should return to Galilee,” Peter repeated obstinately.

John grasped the others’ hands and shoulders. “Brothers,” he besought them, “think of the Baptist’s final words. He raised his arms under the executioner’s sword and shouted, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, leave the desert. I am departing. Return to mankind. Come, do not forsake the world!’ Those words have a deep significance, friends. God forgive me if I utter a blasphemy, but ...”

His heart stopped. Andrew clasped his hand.

“Speak, John. What terrible presentiment is it that you don’t dare reveal?”

“But if our master is the ...” he stammered.

“Is what?”

John’s voice was soft, gasping, full of terror: “... the Messiah!”

They all shook. The Messiah! They had been with him for such a long time, and the idea had never entered their heads! At first they had taken him for a good man, a saint who was bringing love to the world; then for a prophet, not a wild one like the prophets of old, but gay and domesticated. He was lowering the kingdom of heaven to earth: in other words, he was bringing justice and a comfortable, contented way of life. He called the ancestral God of Israel “Father,” and no sooner did he do so than hard-necked, obstinate Jehovah sweetened and everyone became his child. ... But now, what was this word which had escaped John’s lips—Messiah! In other words: the sword of David, Israel’s omnipotence, war! And they, the disciples, his first followers: they were great lords, tetrarchs and patriarchs around his throne! As God had angels and archangels surrounding him in heaven, so they, the disciples, were the ethnarchs and patriarchs upon the earth! Their eyes gleamed.

“I take back what I said, lads,” exclaimed Peter, blushing terribly. “I shall never leave him!”

“Nor I!”

“Nor I!”

“Nor I!”

Judas spat angrily and banged his fist on the door. “You damned stalwarts!” he screamed at them. “As long as you believed him sickly and weak, you couldn’t get away fast enough. But now that you smell grandeur: ‘I shall never leave him!’ One day every single one of you will forsake him—mark my words—while I alone shall not betray him. Simon of Cyrene, be my witness!”