The Last Temptation of Christ (70 page)

“Yes, Beloved, we have turned white,” Mary answered. “The years go by. We planted this vine whose shade we’re sitting under now, we planted it the year that accursed hunchback came, the one who threw a spell over you and made you faint—do you remember? How many years have we been eating these grapes?”

The Negro slid down from the edge of the roof without a sound and stepped in front of them. Mary got up and left. She did not like this strange adopted child. He did not grow, he did not age; he was not a man, he was a spirit, an evil spirit that had entered the house and would not leave again. And she did not like his derisive, frolicking eyes, nor his secret conversations with Jesus during the night.

The Negro approached, his eyes all mockery. His teeth were flashing, sharp and white. “Jesus of Nazareth,” he said softly, “the end is near.”

Surprised, Jesus turned. “What end?”

The Negro put his finger to his lips. “The end is near,” he repeated. He squatted opposite Jesus and looked at him, laughing.

“Are you leaving me?” Jesus asked, and he suddenly felt strangely glad and relieved.

“Yes, the end has come. Why are you smiling, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“Have a nice trip. I’ve got from you what I wanted: I don’t need you any more.”

“Is this the way you say goodbye to me? Can you be so ungrateful? All my years of toil for your sake, all my efforts to give you every joy you desired: were these efforts in vain?”

“If your purpose was to smother me in honey, like a bee, your pains have gone to waste. I’ve eaten all the honey I wanted, all I could, but I did not dip in my wings.”

“What wings, clairvoyant?”

“My Soul.”

The Negro guffawed maliciously. “Wretch, do you think you have a soul?”

“I have. And it doesn’t need guardian angels or Negro boys: it is free.”

The guardian angel went wild with rage. “Rebel!” he howled. He pulled up a stone from the courtyard, crumbled it between his palms and scattered the dust into the air.

“All right,” he said, “we shall see,” and he drew toward the door, cursing.

Wild cries, wailing, lamentation ... Horses neighed; the highway filled with flocks of running people. “Jerusalem is burning!” they shouted. “They’ve taken Jerusalem! We’re lost!”

The Romans had besieged the city for months, but the Israelites placed their hopes in Jehovah. They were secure. The holy city could not burn, the holy city had no fears; an angel with a scimitar stood at each of her gates. And now ...

The women dashed into the street, screaming and pulling their hair. The men tore their clothes and shouted for God to appear. Jesus rose, took Mary and Martha by the hand, brought them inside and bolted the door.

“Why do you cry?” he said to them compassionately. “Why do you resist God’s will? Listen to what I shall tell you, and do not be afraid. Time is a fire, beloved wives. Time is a fire, and God holds the spit. Each year he rotates one paschal lamb. This year the paschal lamb is Jerusalem; next year it will be Rome; the following year—”

“Be quiet, Rabbi,” Mary screamed. “You forget that we’re women, and weak.”

“Forgive me, Mary,” said Jesus. “I forgot. When the heart takes the uphill road it forgets, and has no mercy.”

While he spoke, heavy steps were heard outside in the street. There was the sound of gasping breaths, and thick staffs knocked loudly on the door.

The Negro jumped up, seized the bolt of the door, looked at Jesus and smiled mockingly. “Shall I open?” he asked, hardly able to restrain his laughter. “It’s your old companions, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“My old companions?”

“You shall see them!” said the Negro, and he threw the door wide open.

A cluster of tiny old men appeared in the doorway. Deteriorated and unrecognizable, they crept into the yard, one leaning against the other. It seemed as though they were glued together and could not be torn apart.

Jesus advanced one pace and stopped. He wanted to extend his hand to bid them welcome, but suddenly his soul felt crushed by an unbearable bitterness—by bitterness, indignation and pity. He clenched his fists and waited. There was a heavy effluvium from charred wood, singed hair and open wounds. The air stank. The Negro had climbed up onto the horse block. He watched them and laughed.

Taking one step more, Jesus turned to the old man who crept in the lead. “You, in front,” he said, “come here. Stand still while I push away the ruins of time and see who you are. My heart pounds, but this hanging flesh, these eyes filled with discharge—I do not know them.”

“Don’t you recognize me, my rabbi?”

“Peter! Are you the rock on which, once upon a time in the folly of my youth, I wanted to build my church? How you’ve degenerated, son of Jonah! No longer a rock but a sponge full of holes!”

“The years, my rabbi ...”

“What years? The years are not to blame. As long as the soul stands erect it holds the body high and does not allow the years to touch it. Your soul has declined, Peter, your soul!”

“The troubles of the world came upon me. I married, had children, received wounds, saw Jerusalem burn. ... I’m human: all that broke me.”

“Yes, you’re human and all that broke you,” Jesus murmured with sympathy. “Poor Peter, in the state the world’s in today, you have to be both God and the devil to endure.”

He turned to the next one, who emerged from behind Peter’s shoulder. “And you?” he said. “They cut off your nose: your face has become a skull—all holes. How do you expect me to recognize you? Go on, old companion, speak. Say ‘Rabbi!’ and perhaps I shall remember who you are!”

The ramshackle form uttered a tremendous cry: “Rabbi!” and then lowered its head and was still.

“Jacob! Zebedee’s eldest son, the massive colossus, the mind set solidly foursquare!”

“His remains, Rabbi,” said Jacob, sniveling. “A wild storm crippled me. The keel cracked, the hull opened, the mast fell. I return to port a wreck.”

“What port?”

“You, Rabbi.”

“What can I do for you? I am not a shipyard where you can be caulked. What I shall say, Jacob, is hard, but just: the only port for you is the bottom of the sea. As your father used to say, two and two make four.”

He was suddenly overcome with indignation and intense sorrow. He turned to a second chaplet of old men. “And you three? Ho, you, you, the gawky bean-stalk: once upon a time weren’t you Nathanael? You’ve grown flabby. Just look at your bloated, dangling backside, belly and double chins! What did you do with your firm muscles, Nathanael? You are nothing but the skeleton of a three-storied house now. Yes, only scaffolding remains, but do not sigh—that is enough, Nathanael, to get you to heaven.”

But Nathanael became angry. “What heaven? It wasn’t bad enough I lost my ears, fingers and one eye! No, besides that, everything you pounded into us: the pomp, strutting, majesty, kingdom of heaven—the whole lot was drunkenness and now we’ve sobered up! What do you think, Philip? Am I right?”

“What can I say, Nathanael,” said a tiny old man lost in the middle of the pile. “What can I say, brother! It’s I who have to answer for your joining us!”

Jesus shook his head sympathetically and took the hand of this tiny old man they called Philip. “I fell hopelessly in love with you, Philip, best of all shepherds, because you had no sheep. You possessed only the shepherd’s crook and you herded the air. At night you took out the winds and put them to pasture. In your imagination you lighted fires, in your imagination you set up the great cauldrons, boiled the milk and sent it flowing from the top of the mountain down to the plain, so that the poor could drink. All your wealth was within your heart. Outside: poverty, hootings, solitude and hunger. That is what it means to be my disciple! And now ... Philip, Philip, best of all shepherds, how you’ve fallen! You longed, alas, for real sheep, sheep whose wool, whose flesh, you could grasp in your hand—and you perished!”

“I get hungry,” Philip replied. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Think of God and you shall be filled!” Jesus answered, and then suddenly his heart hardened again.

He turned to a hunched-over old man who had collapsed into the watering trough and remained there, shivering. He lifted the rags which covered him, pushed aside his eyebrows, but could not understand who he was. When he searched under the hair, however, he found a large ear with an age-old broken quill behind it. He laughed.

“Welcome to the immense ear,” he said, greeting him. “Huge, erect, full of hairs, it used to quiver like a rabbit’s, all fear, curiosity and hunger. Welcome to the inky fingers and the inkstand heart! Do you still fill papers with blots, Matthew, my scribe? The quill, completely broken, is still behind your ear. Did you wage war using this as your lance?”

“Why do you jeer at me,” said the other with a bitter taste on his lips. “Will you never stop ridiculing us? Think of the magnificence with which I began to write your life and times. I too would have become immortal, along with you. And now, the peacock has lost his feathers. It wasn’t a peacock; it was a chicken. What a shame I worked so hard!”

Jesus suddenly felt his knees go slack. He bowed his head; but then, quickly, angrily, he raised it and pointed his finger threateningly at Matthew.

“Quiet!” he said. “How dare you!”

An emaciated, cross-eyed old man appeared between Nathanael’s legs and chuckled. Jesus turned, saw him and recognized him immediately.

“Thomas, my seven-month babe, welcome! Where did you sow your teeth? What did you do with the two hairs you had on your scalp? And from what goat did you uproot that greasy little beard which hangs from your chin? Two-faced, seven-eyed, all-cunning Thomas, is it you?”

“In person! Only the teeth are missing—they fell out along the way—and the two hairs. Everything else is in order.”

“The mind?”

“A true cock. It mounts the dung heap knowing well enough It isn’t the one who brings the sun, but it crows nevertheless every morning and brings it—because it knows the right time to crow.

“And did you fight too, hero of heroes, to save Jerusalem?”

“Me fight? Am I stupid? I played the prophet.”

“The prophet? So the tiny ant-mind grew wings? Did God blow upon you?”

“What has God got to do with this? My intellect, all by itself, found the secret.”

“What secret?”

“What being a prophet means. Your holiness also knew it once, but I think you’ve forgotten.”

“Well, sly Thomas, remind me—it might come in handy again. What is a prophet?”

“A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You’ll ask me why. It’s because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.

“It’s a dangerous thing for a man to talk with you, Thomas,” Jesus said, winking at him. “Inside your tiny, quick-moving crossed eyes I perceive a tail, two horns—and a spark of burning light.”

“True light burns, Rabbi—you know that, but you pity mankind. The heart takes pity: that’s why the world finds itself in darkness. The mind does not take pity: that’s why the world is on fire. ... Ah, you nod to me to be still. You’re right; I’ll be still. We mustn’t uncover such secrets in front of these simple souls. None of them has any endurance, except one: him!”

“Who is that?”

Thomas dragged himself as far as the street door and pointed, without touching him, to a colossus who stood on the threshold like a withered, lightning-charred tree. The roots of his hair and beard were still red.

“Him!” he said, shrinking back. “Judas! He’s the only one who still holds himself erect. Take care, Rabbi. He’s full of vigor, and unyielding. Speak to him gently, ingratiate yourself with him. Look, his obstinate skull is steaming with rage.”

“Well, then, to avoid getting bitten let’s catch this desert lion by sending a tame lion after him. Have we descended to this!” He raised his voice. “Judas, my brother, Time is a royal man-eating tiger. He is not satisfied with men: he also devours cities, kingdoms and (forgive me, God) even gods! But you he has not touched. Your rage has refused to boil away; no, you have never made your peace with the world. I still perceive the unyielding knife by your breast, and in your eyes hate, wrath and hope, the great fires of youth. ... Welcome!”

“Judas, can’t you hear?” murmured John, who had collapsed at Jesus’ feet. He was unrecognizable, with a white beard and two deep wounds on his cheeks and neck. “Can’t you hear, Judas? The master is greeting you. Greet him in return!”

“He’s pigheaded and obstinate like a mule,” said Peter. “He bites his lips to keep himself from talking.”

But Jesus had fixed his eyes on his old savage companion and was speaking to him sweetly. “Judas, the chattering messenger birds passed over the roof of my house and let fall the news, which then dropped into my yard. It seems you took to the mountains and made war against tyrants, both native and foreign. Then you went down to Jerusalem, seized the traitorous Sadducees, tied red ribbons around their necks and slaughtered them like lambs on the altar of the God of Israel. You’re a great, gloomy, desperate soul, Judas. Since the day we separated you haven’t seen a single day of gladness. Judas, my brother, I’ve missed you very much. Welcome!”

John’s terrified eyes regarded Judas, who was still biting his lips to prevent himself from speaking. “Dense smoke never ceases to curl up over his head,” he murmured, and he dragged himself back to the others.

“Take care, Rabbi,” said Peter. “He looks at you from every angle and weighs where he’s going to fall upon you first!”

“I’m speaking to you, Judas, my brother,” Jesus continued. “Can’t you hear? I greet you, but you don’t place your hand over your heart and say, ‘I’m glad to see you!’ Has Jerusalem’s suffering stricken you dumb? Do not bite your lips. You’re a man: bear up, don’t burst into lamentations. You did your duty bravely. The deep wounds in your arms, breast, face—all in front—proclaim that you fought like a lion. But what can a man do against God? Fighting to save Jerusalem, you were fighting against God. In his mind the holy city was reduced to ashes years ago.”

“Look, he’s come a step forward,” murmured Philip, frightened. “He’s sunk his head into his shoulders, like a bull. Now he’ll charge.”