The Last Temptation of Christ (9 page)

“What did you hear? Tell us everything, Father,” Peter called. He elbowed his way through the crowd and stood in front of the rabbi. The old man bent over, looked at Peter and smiled.

“God, Peter, is a fisherman like yourself. He too goes out to fish at night when the moon is full or nearly full; and that night it was full—it sailed in the sky as white as milk, so exceedingly merciful and benevolent that I could not close my eyes. The house constricted me. I marched through the narrow lanes and left Nazareth, climbed up high, perched on a rock and stared toward the south—toward holy Jerusalem. The moon leaned over and looked at me like a human being, smiling; I looked at it—at its mouth, its cheeks, at the corners of its eyes—and sighed. I felt it was speaking to me, speaking to me out of the silence of the night: yet I could not hear. ... Not a leaf stirred on the earth; the unmown plain smelled just like bread, milk cascaded down the mountains around me, down Tabor, Gilboa and Carmel. ... This is God’s night, I thought. This full moon must be the nocturnal face of the Lord. Nights in the future Jerusalem will be such as this.

“No sooner had this thought come to me than my eyes filled with tears. Grievance and fear took hold of me. ‘I’ve grown old,’ I shouted. ‘Am I going to die without the Messiah first having gladdened my sight?’

“I jumped to my feet. The sacred fury had seized me again. Removing my belt and all my clothes, I stood before God’s eyes just as I was when my mother begot me. I wanted him to see how I had aged, how I’d withered and shriveled up like a fig leaf in autumn, like the bare dangling stem of a cluster of grapes which has been plundered by birds. I wanted him to see me, pity me, and move quickly!

“And as I stood there stark naked before the Lord, I felt the moonlight penetrate my flesh. I had become wholly spirit: one with God, I heard his voice, not from outside or above, but from within me. Within me! God’s true voice always comes to us from within. ‘Simeon, Simeon,’ I heard, ‘I shall not let you die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’

“ ‘Lord, say that again!’ I cried.

“ ‘Simeon, Simeon, I shall not let you die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’

“I was so happy, I went out of my mind. Stark naked, I began to dance under the moon, clapping my hands and stamping my feet on the ground. I don’t know if this dance lasted a split second or a thousand years, but in any case I had enough finally—I found relief. Putting on my clothes and buckling my belt, I went down to Nazareth. The moment the cocks saw me from their perches high up on the rooftops they began to crow. The sky laughed, the birds awoke, doors opened and bade me good morning. My shabby house glittered from top to bottom—doors, windows, everything: all rubies. Wood, rocks, men, birds: all smelled the presence of God around me. The centurion himself, bloodsucker that he is, halted with astonishment. ‘What’s the matter with you, rabbi?’ he asked me. ‘You’re a lighted torch. Watch out, don’t set Nazareth on fire!’ But I said nothing: I did not want him to soil my breath.

“I’ve kept this secret hidden close to my skin for years and years. I’ve enjoyed it all by myself, jealously and proudly—and I’ve waited. But today, this black day that has seen a new cross nailed into our hearts, I am unable to guard it any longer. I pity the people of Israel. Therefore I unveil to you the joyous news: he is coming, he is no longer far away. He has probably stopped for a drink of water at some near-by well, or for a slice of bread at some oven where the loaves have just been removed. But no matter where he is, he will appear—because God said so, and what he says, he does not unsay. ‘Simeon, you will not die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’ ... I feel my strength leaving me day by day, but to the degree it departs, by so much does the Saviour approach. I am eighty-five years old. He cannot delay any more!”

A hairless cross-eyed man with a sharp, skinny snout jumped up. He looked as though someone had forgotten to add the yeast when he was kneaded.

“But what if you live a thousand years, Father?” he interrupted. ‘What if you never die? We’ve seen that happen. Enoch and Elijah are still alive!” His tiny wry eyes flitted slyly from side to side.

The rabbi pretended that he had not heard, but the cross-eyed man’s hissed words were knives in his heart. He lifted his hand commandingly. “I want to be alone with God. Leave—all of you!”

The place emptied out, the crowd dispersed, the old rabbi remained all by himself. He locked the street door and fell deep into thought, leaning against the wall where the prophet Ezekiel hovered in the air. He is God, he reflected, and omnipotent: he does what he likes. Can that rascal Thomas be right? Woe is me if God decides I should live a thousand years! And if he decides I should never die—then the Messiah ... Are the great hopes of the race of Israel all in vain? It has held the Word of God in its womb for thousands of years, nourishing it as a mother nourishes her seed. Our flesh and bone have been devoured: we have melted away, living only for this Son. But now the race has gone into labor; Abraham’s seed cries out. Release it, Lord, release it at last! You are God, you can endure—we cannot. Mercy!

He paced up and down the synagogue. The day had finally waned. The shadows snuffed out the paintings and swallowed Ezekiel. The old rabbi looked at the penumbra which descended about him, and suddenly all that he had seen and suffered in his life rushed into his mind. How many times and with what longing he had run from Galilee to Jerusalem, then from Jerusalem to the desert in pursuit of the Messiah! But without fail a cross had put an end to his hopes and he had returned to Nazareth ashamed. Today, however ...

He squeezed his head between his hands.

“No, no,” he murmured in terror, “no, no, it’s impossible!”

For days and nights now his mind had been drumming and ready to split. A new hope had come to him, a hope too large for his mind-a madness, a demon which was devouring him. But this was not the first time. This madness had been digging its claws into his mind for years. He would banish it, and it would come again. But it had never dared appear during the day; it had always come in the darkness of night, or in his dreams. Today, however, today—at noon, in broad daylight! ... Was he the one?

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. There he was, passing once more in front of him, gasping, with the cross on his back; and all about him the air trembled, just as it must tremble around the archangels. ... Look! he raised his eyes. Never had the old rabbi seen so much of heaven in the eyes of man! Was he the one? “Lord, Lord,” the rabbi murmured, “why do you torment me? Why don’t you answer?”

The prophecies tore like lightning flashes through his mind. At one moment his aged head filled with light, at the next it sank without hope into the darkness. His bowels opened and the patriarchs came forth. Within him, his hard-necked persevering race, covered with wounds and led by Moses, the head ram with the twisted horns, started again on its endless journey from the Land of Slavery to the Land of Canaan; then the journey continued from the Land of Canaan to the future Jerusalem. In this new march, however, it was not the patriarch Moses who blazed the trail, but another—the rabbi’s mind throbbed—another, bearing a cross upon his shoulder. ...

He reached the street door with one bound and opened it. The wind hit his face; he inhaled deeply. The sun had set; the birds were going home to sleep. The narrow streets filled with shadows; the earth grew cool. He locked the door and slipped the heavy key under his belt. For an instant he lost courage, but then all at once he made his decision. Head bowed, he set out toward Mary’s house.

Mary sat on a high stool in the tiny yard of her house. She was spinning. It was still bright outside: the summer light drew slowly away from the face of the earth and did not wish to leave. Men and oxen were returning from their work in the fields. Housewives lighted fires for the evening cooking; the fragrance of burning wood invaded the afternoon air. Mary spun, and her mind twirled now this way, now that—together with the spindle. Memory and imagination joined: her life seemed half truth, half fable. The petty round of daily tasks had lasted for years, and then suddenly the stunning uninvited peacock—the miracle—had come and covered her tormented existence with its long golden wings.

“Take me where you want, Lord; do with me what you will. You chose my husband, you presented me with my son, you gave me my suffering. You tell me to cry out and I cry out; you tell me to keep still and I keep still. What am I, Lord? A handful of mud in your hands, and you knead me as you please. Do what you want. There is only one thing I beg of you: Lord, pity my son!”

A brilliantly white dove flew down from the roof opposite, beat its wings for a moment over her head and then alighted with dignity on the pebbles of the yard and began to walk methodically around and around Mary’s feet. It spread its tail feathers, bent its neck, turned its head and looked at Mary, its round eye flashing in the evening light like a ruby. It looked at her, spoke to her. It must want to inform me of some secret, she said to herself. Oh, if the old rabbi would only come. He knows all about the language of the birds and could interpret for me. ... She looked at the dove and felt sorry for it. Leaving her spindle, she called the bird in a very tender voice, and the delighted dove took a hop and landed on her joined knees. And there, as though its whole secret was that it had been longing to reach those knees, it squatted, drew in its wings, and remained motionless.

Mary felt the sweet weight and smiled. Ah, if it were possible for God always to come down so sweetly over men! As she thought this, she recalled the morning she and her fiancé Joseph had climbed to the prophet Elijah’s summit, to heaven-kissed Carmel. They wanted to beg the fiery prophet to mediate with God so that they might have a son, whom they would then dedicate to the prophet’s grace. They were to marry that same evening and had departed before dawn to receive the blessing of this flaming prophet whose great joy was the thunderbolt. Not a cloud in the sky; it was a lovely autumn. The human ants had gathered in their crops; the must was boiling in the jars; the figs drying, strung up on the rafters. Mary was fifteen at the time, her groom an old man with gray hair, but in his firm hand he held as a support the staff which had been foreordained to blossom.

They reached the holy summit at exactly noon. They knelt and touched the sharp, blood-stained granite with their fingertips, trembling. A spark flew out of the rock and cut Mary’s hand. Joseph opened his mouth to call the summit’s wild inhabitant, but before he could utter a sound the bellowing hail-laden clouds bounded angrily down from the foundations of heaven and formed a swirling funnel over the sharp granite. As Joseph darted forward to clasp his fiancée and take her to the shelter of some cave, God slung a terrifying flash of lightning, heaven and earth joined and Mary fell over backward in a swoon. When she came to and opened her eyes and looked around her, she saw Joseph lying face down on the black granite—paralyzed. ...

Mary placed her hand on the dove which sat upon her knees. She caressed it lightly so that she would not frighten it. “God descended in a savage form on top of the mountain and spoke to me in a savage way,” she murmured. “What did he say to me?”

She had often been questioned on this by the rabbi, who was bewildered by the repeated miracles which surrounded her.

“Try to remember, Mary,” he would say. “This is the way God sometimes speaks to men—by means of the thunderbolt. Fight hard to remember, so that we may discover your son’s fate.”

“There was thunder, Father. It rolled down from heaven like a creaking ox cart.”

“And behind the thunder, Mary?”

“Yes, you’re right, Father. God spoke behind the thunder, but I wasn’t able to discover the actual words. Forgive me.”

Caressing the dove, she struggled to bring the lightning back to mind after thirty years and to untangle its hidden meaning.

She closed her eyes. In her palm she felt the dove’s tiny warm body and beating heart. Suddenly—she did not realize how, she did not know why—dove and lightning were one; she was sure of it: these heartbeats and the thunder—all were God! She uttered a cry and jumped up in terror. Now, for the first time, she was able to make out the words hidden in the thunder, hidden in the dove’s cooing: “Hail, Mary ... Hail, Mary ...” Without a doubt, this was what God had cried: “Hail, Mary ...”

Turning, she saw her husband propped up against the wall, still opening and closing his mouth. It was dark now, yet he still toiled and sweated. She went to the doorway, passing in front of him but not speaking to him. She wanted to see if by any chance her son was coming. She had watched him twist the crucified man’s bloody kerchief over his hair and start down the road toward the plain. Where had he gone? Why was he late? Was he going to stay out in the fields again until daybreak?

As she stood on the threshold she saw the old rabbi approaching. He was puffing, leaning heavily on his crosier. The tufts of white hair at each of his temples waved in the evening breeze which had begun to come down from Mount Carmel.

Mary stepped to one side with respect, and the rabbi entered. He took his brother’s hand, patted it, but did not speak to him—what could he say? His mind submerged in dark waters, he turned to Mary.

“Your eyes are shining, Mary,” he said. “What’s the matter? Did God come again?”

“Father, I’ve found it!” said Mary, unable to restrain herself.

“You’ve found it? Found what, in God’s name?”

“The words behind the lightning.”

The rabbi gave a start. “Great is the God of Israel,” he cried, lifting high his arms. “This was precisely why I came, Mary, to ask you once more. Today, as you know, one of our hopes was crucified, and my heart ...”

“I’ve found it, Father,” Mary repeated. “While I was sitting this evening and spinning and thinking again about the lightning, I felt the thunder grow quiet within me for the first time, and behind it I heard a serene, clear voice, the voice of God: ‘Hail, Mary’!”