Dear and Glorious Physician (60 page)

It was finally rumored, with immense excitement, that He was the Messias. He would rescue His people Israel from the power of Rome, and with throngs of angels would drive the Roman legions from the walls of Jerusalem. For the first time, then, Pontius Pilate, who never interfered with any Jewish affairs, being a discreet man, became concerned. Let the Jews fight among themselves, as they did interminably over some doctrine or other, so long as the fights did not threaten the authority of Rome. The tetrarch, Herod, half Greek, half Jew, was approached by the high priests, who declared that the Jews were in danger because of the teachings of this miserable rabbi, who not only asserted He had come to fulfill the laws of the prophets and that the priests were deceiving the people and oppressing them, but He was causing confusion and diversion inimical to the peaceful relations between the Jews and their masters, the Romans. Herod discussed the matter with Pilate, who visited Jerusalem, which he did not like, and he was annoyed that this visit was forced upon him. He called Plotius and Priscus to him and questioned them. Plotius shrugged and declared that the priests were always in a frenzy and one should not listen to them seriously. Priscus spoke to Pilate of the rumors of miracles, and Plotius laughed. Pilate was more concerned with a possible uprising of the Jews than with the rabbi as a Person.

“I am not certain what happened next,” said Priscus, in his feeble but insistent voice, and staring with queer and vivid eyes at his brother. “The affairs of the Jews were nothing to me. I understand, however, that the high priests demanded the death of the wandering, footsore rabbi, and that He was brought before Pilate for a judgment. Pilate found no fault with Him, but the rabble howled for His death, not because they particularly disliked Him but because they wished excitement. It was the Jewish Passover, and I was there, and I was ordered to keep peace. At the Passover the Jews address us as Egyptians, and this is incomprehensible, and insulting. My Jewish friends withdraw from me for the period.”

It was the eve of the Passover. The excitement in the city over the rabbi was growing to an unbearable pitch. Groups fought in the streets, and cursed the soldiers who separated them. And then Priscus received his orders to execute the disturbing rabbi with two thieves who had been condemned to death. It was only another disagreeable task, and Priscus followed his orders.

It was customary, under Roman law, that those criminals who had been condemned to the vilest death on the cross be scourged before execution. Priscus had ordered two of his lesser officers to officiate on that occasion; the rabbi was in prison awaiting the final punishment. He himself waited for the hour when he would lead his soldiers and the executioners to the usual place, a mount known as Golgotha, or the Place of Skulls. He sat on his horse, bored to the point of fatigue, for he had spent hours in a favorite tavern the night before, and he was restive that this mean task had been relegated to him. The criminal was only a wretched Jew, stricken with poverty and unworthy of the attention of a high officer such as himself. He did look about at the turbulent, excited throngs with a slightly curious eye. But the Jews were always excited, and quite often over the most insignificant things. He heard muffled curses thrown at him as he sat on his horse among his mounted officers, but the Jews, especially when their holy days approached, frequently cursed the Romans even when on other days they were friendly to them. It was nothing of importance. He even laughed good-naturedly, and jested with his officers, and yawned.

The crowds had gathered all along the narrow road leading from the prison to the Place of Skulls. Priscus was suddenly arrested by the expressions of many of the people. The volatile Jews were unusually, and quickly, silent. Hundreds of women were openly weeping; others held their little children high in the manner of mothers who wish their offspring to catch a glimpse of an approaching prince or high potentate. Many men were wringing their hands and weeping in silence, or beating their breasts. A strange air of doom hung over the city and the people. A mysterious hot light bathed the earth; it was as if the sun, losing his natural golden color, had become fiercely incandescent. And in this light the colors of the garments of the people took on a vivid hue; crimson and blue, striped red and white, yellow and black, rose and emerald — they glowed as if about to burst into flame. The faces became imminent; every line, mold of nose or mouth, color of eye, glimmer of forehead and chin, even those most distant, had a wild clarity and vehemence. The odor of sweat pervaded the burning air. There were no priests in that crushing yet oddly quiet throng; they had done their work; they were in the Temple preparing for the Passover. Priscus glanced uneasily at the sky. There, over the bronze mounts, the sky was a most peculiar color. It was as if a cauldron boiled out of sight beyond the Place of Skulls, throwing up its gathering steam of pale red and purple. The steam smoldered and moved. Priscus called the attention of his nearest officer to it. The officer was a young man, and superstitious, and he looked at that malign and colored movement with dismay. “Who is it that we are to execute?” he asked. Priscus had replied, “Only three criminals.” The young officer had fingered an amulet and had shaken his head and had muttered, “I do not like this. There are portents here.” Priscus had laughed at him, but he had shifted on his horse. He sneezed; the fiery air, so flaming, was filled with hot yellow dust. He sweated under his armor.

Then there was a turbulence before the gates of the prison. A roaring cry assaulted the ears, and a deep groaning and wailing. Priscus and his officers rode nearer the gates. A man was being dragged forth by foot soldiers. He was a tall man, with golden hair and a golden beard. He appeared prostrated. He wore a torn garment of white, and over that a crimson cloak of poor cloth. On His high head a crown of thorns had been thrust, and His white face streamed with blood. “What is this?” muttered the young officer to Priscus, but Priscus could not reply.

For he saw the face of the criminal, which, despite the blood and dirt, was noble beyond imagining, and calm and gentle, and appeared to radiate with a light of its own, greater even than the furious light of the sun. His was the countenance of a king, majestic and holy, and removed from any fear. A cold horror, which he could not explain, seized Priscus. This was no criminal; this was a man of the highest blood. His garments took on the majesty of purple; the crown of thorns was a crown of gold. The horror increased in Priscus. Was this the wretched rabbi, in truth? Was this the countryman of no family and no wealth? It was incredible. He had the aspect of an emperor, though the soldiers pushed Him and beat Him, and laughed at Him in the way of all coarse subordinates, and spat in His face.

“Hail, King of the Jews!” shouted the soldiers, and the market rabble howled. But hundreds of sobbing women fell on their knees and stretched forth their arms, and hundreds of men wailed and their faces ran with tears, and hundreds of little children cried. The scene was too chaotic for a single pair of eyes, and the eyes of Priscus became frantic with trying to encompass all things. But finally he could see no one but the condemned, who was staggering under the blows of the soldiers.

Priscus wheeled his horse, and his hands trembled on the reins. He motioned to his officers, and they began to canter towards the gates of the city, which were creaking open. Priscus said to himself, Who is this who is about to die? He looked back over his shoulder. A cross had been thrust upon the shoulders of the weakened rabbi, and He was weaving desperately under it, trying to keep to His feet under the weight and the blows of the soldiers. The horror deepened in Priscus. He reached within his armor and clutched his own amulet, a talisman against evil. But the metal burned his fingers, and it was wet with his sweat.

About and around him he heard the most deafening howls and screams and cries and wailings. The light was insufferable; it was as if a dozen suns had joined their incandescent brother. The glare stung the eyelids and inflamed the forehead. The stench of humanity and the acrid taste of rising dust nauseated the young Roman. His head ached fiercely; it was as if his bones within him trembled and quivered. All colors blazed too savagely for him; he half closed his eyelids to escape that fury of hue and fiery light. The near and distant buildings danced wildly before him; heat waves shimmered over all things, giving them the aspect of madness and instability. And beyond Golgotha the red and purple clouds streamed up into the sky like flickering tongues, spreading themselves over the white-hot heavens, leaping from behind the copper of the mount.

A greater cry assaulted the awful air, and again Priscus glanced over his shoulders. The criminal had fallen in the dust; a young woman, her face covered with tears, was wiping his face. A soldier had shouted peremptorily to a bystander, and the man, dark of skin, and huge, came at once and lifted the cross from the shoulders of the condemned. With the assistance of the soldiers he placed the cross over his own shoulders, and he stood up from the crouching position, and a deep smile played on his features. He looked at the sky, and tears and sweat burst out on his sun-browned flesh. He moved on docilely, like one in an ecstatic dream, and with strength, not faltering. It was as if he bore on his shoulders the litter of a king, proudly. And behind him stumbled the criminal, His lips moving. The populace followed like a varicolored river, shouting or groaning, shaking their fists in the air or weeping. And over it all poured that unearthly and shattering light.

Then Priscus heard a voice, speaking in slurred Aramaic, but pure and sure and strong, like the voice of a ruler: “Daughters of Jerusalem! Weep not for me but for your children. For behold! days are coming in which men will say, ‘Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and breasts that never nursed!’ Then they will begin to say to the mountains, ‘Fall on us!’ And to the hills, ‘Cover us!’ ”

Priscus was stunned by that voice and the strange words it had uttered. It was as if a thousand oracles had spoken; it was as if Apollo, moved by the agony of men, had wept for them. It was as if Zeus had hurled thunderbolts into the sky. And the people, so clamorous, so beset, so weeping, and so torn with grief, fell silent for a moment.

“Who is He?” cried the young soldier to Priscus, and Priscus could not answer.

The hot and furious climbing road lay before them, rising to Golgotha. And Priscus said to himself in terrible and nameless despair, I must not look behind me again! But he could not shut from his awareness the tremendous lamentation that mingled with the disastrous light, a lamentation that followed the condemned man like the tide of sorrow and despair. And over and above this tide shrilled the shrieks of the market rabble, lusting, as always, in its instinct of hatred and menace and eagerness for a victim.

The yellow battlemented walls of the city fell behind, and the narrow way rose sharply to the Mount of Golgotha, whose copper rise appeared to fume with an infernal fire of its own. Stones shifted under the hoofs of Priscus’ horse, and dropped back, rumbling. He could hear the clatter of the horses of his followers, and their frightened, muffled curses. Dazed, he looked about the heat-stricken countryside, the terraced hills with their burdens of cypresses and olive trees, its patches of green gardens. But all bore the sinister glare of a nightmare, shifting and without substance. Sweat poured down the face of Priscus, and he removed his helmet to wipe his head and face; his breath came heavily and with enormous effort. I must not think! he cried to himself. I am sick; I see with the eyes of sickness. This is nothing significant; this is only the execution of one who is a criminal before Rome, an inciter of mobs against our authority.

But the terror and the horror grew in him like an explosion, pressing against his heart and his mind and the organs of his flesh. He was appalled at the sky above the mount; the colored flames rose higher, devouring. He could actually feel their palpitation. His superstitious Roman spirit cowered. The lamentations filled the baleful air.

Priscus said to his nearest officer, “Hold back the mob! Let them not cover the top of the mount; they must remain below! Who knows what they will do to us? For we are few, and they are thousands, large with excitement and emotion.”

The officers wheeled on their struggling horses and rode down against the mobs, but Priscus would not look back. Panting, he dropped his head on his breast and waited. After a little it seemed to him that the cries and the wailings dimmed slightly, as his officers and their foot soldiers turned back the people to prevent them from ascending to the final height. Then Priscus saw that two crosses were now being lifted against the ominous and streaming sky, leaving a place between them. He could see the naked men clearly, though he was still at a distance, and below. They had dark, contorted faces; their arms stretched in agony on the crosses; one screamed.

Now his officers were about him again, and the youngest one said, “We have kept them back; they will not intrude, for our men have their swords drawn.”

Now Priscus was impelled to glance behind him. The people covered the lower stretches of the mount like a turbulent forest of many colors; they moved constantly, shaking and quivering in all their parts. And before them came the little procession of the cross-bearer, a few soldiers, and the condemned man. The rabbi climbed with feeble motions, his head bent. Yet all his aspect was royal; he was a captive king awaiting execution. Priscus stared at him with terrible intensity, and at that moment Jesus lifted His countenance, and the blue of His eyes glowed in His face. His red robe trailed from His shoulders, and it was a regal garment.