Barabbas (15 page)

The venerable old man gradually got to know both why the Lord’s name was crossed out and why Barabbas had helped to set fire to Rome—that he had wanted to help them and their Saviour to set this world on fire. The old man shook his white head in distress when he heard this. He asked Barabbas how he could have thought it was
they who had started the fire. It was Caesar himself who had had it done, the wild beast himself, and it was him Barabbas had helped.

—It was this worldly ruler you helped, he said, him to whom your slave’s disk says you belong, not the Lord whose name is crossed out on it. Without knowing it, you served your rightful lord.

—Our Lord is Love, he added gently. And taking the disk that hung on Barabbas’s chest amongst the grey hairs, he looked sorrowfully at his Lord and Master’s crossed-out name.

He let it drop from his old fingers and sighed heavily. For he realized that this was Barabbas’s disk, the one he had to bear, and that there was nothing at all he could do to help him. And he realized that the other knew this too, saw it from his timid and solitary eyes.

—Who is he? Who is he? they all shouted when the old man got to his feet again. At first he didn’t want to answer them, tried to get out of it. But they kept on at him until at last he was forced to do so.

—He is Barabbas, he who was acquitted in the Master’s stead, he said.

They stared at the stranger, dumbfounded. Nothing could have astounded or upset them more than this.

—Barabbas! they whispered. Barabbas the acquitted! Barabbas the acquitted!

They didn’t seem able to grasp it. And their eyes gleamed fierce and threatening in the semi-darkness.

But the old man quietened them.

—This is an unhappy man, he said, and we have
no right to condemn him. We ourselves are full of faults and shortcomings, and it is no credit to us that the Lord has taken pity on us notwithstanding. We have no right to condemn a person because he has no god.

They stood with downcast eyes, and it was as though they didn’t dare to look at Barabbas after this, after these last terrible words. They moved away from him in silence to where they had been sitting before. The old man sighed and followed them with heavy steps.

Barabbas sat there again alone.

He sat there alone day after day in the prison, on one side, apart from them. He heard them sing their songs of faith and speak confidently of their death and the eternal life that awaited them. Especially after sentence had been pronounced did they speak of it a great deal. They were full of trust, there was not the slightest doubt amongst them.

Barabbas listened, deep in his own thoughts. He too thought of what was in store for him. He remembered the man on the Mount of Olives, the one who had shared his bread and salt with him and who was now long since dead again and lay grinning with his skull in the everlasting darkness.

Eternal life …

Was there any meaning in the life he had led? Not even that did he believe in. But this was something he knew nothing about. It was not for him to judge.

Over there sat the white-bearded old man among his own people, listening to them and talking to them in his unmistakable Galilean dialect. But occasionally he
would lean his head in his big hand and sit there for a moment in silence. Perhaps he was thinking of the shore of Genesaret and that he would have liked to die there. But it was not to be. He had met his Master on the road and he had said: “Follow me.” And this he had had to do. He looked ahead of him with his childlike eyes, and his furrowed face with the hollow cheeks radiated a great peace.

And so they were led out to be crucified. They were chained together in pairs, and, as they were not an even number, Barabbas came last in the procession, not chained to anyone. It just turned out like that. In this way, too, it happened that he hung furthest out in the rows of crosses.

A large crowd had collected, and it was a long time before it was all over. But the crucified spoke consolingly and hopefully to each other the whole time. To Barabbas nobody spoke.

When dusk fell the spectators had already gone home, tired of standing there any longer. And besides, by that time the crucified were all dead.

Only Barabbas was left hanging there alone, still alive. When he felt death approaching, that which he had always been so afraid of, he said out into the darkness, as though he were speaking to it:

—To thee I deliver up my soul.

And then he gave up the ghost.

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