The Collected Novels of José Saramago (112 page)

While the carpenter Joseph and his son Jesus debated these important matters in private, the war against the Romans went on. It had been going on for more than two years, and now and then news of casualties reached Nazareth. Ephraim was killed, then Abiezer, then Naphtali, then Eleazar, but no one knew for certain where their bodies lay, between two stones on a mountain, or at the bottom of a ravine, or swept downstream by the current, or beneath the futile shade of a tree. Unable to hold a funeral for those who had died, the villagers of Nazareth eased their conscience by insisting, We neither caused nor witnessed this bloodshed. News also arrived of great victories. The Romans had been driven out of the nearby city of Sepphoris, also from vast regions of Judaea and Galilee where the enemy dared not venture now, and even in Joseph’s own village no Roman soldiers had been sighted for more than a year. Who knows, perhaps this is what prompted the carpenter’s neighbor, the inquisitive and obliging Ananias, whom we have not mentioned for some time, to turn up in the yard one day and whisper in Joseph’s ear, Follow me outside, and no wonder, because these houses are so tiny that it is impossible to have any privacy, everyone is crammed into one room day and night, whatever the circumstances or occasion, so that when the Day of Judgment finally comes, the Lord God should have no difficulty recognizing his own. So the request did not surprise Joseph, not even when Ananias added furtively, Let us go into the desert. Now, the desert is not simply that barren place, that vast expanse of sand or sea of burning dunes we generally picture when we read or hear the word. Desert, as understood here, can also be found in the green land of Galilee, for it means uncultivated fields, where there are no signs of human habitation or labor. Such places cease to be desert when humans arrive on the scene. But since there are only two men walking across this scrubland and Nazareth is still in sight as they head for three great boulders crowning the summit of the hill, there is no suggestion of the place’s being populated, and when the men have gone, the desert will be desert again.

Ananias sits on the ground with Joseph at his side. There is the same age difference between them as there has always been, but, while time passes for everyone, the results can vary. Ananias did not look his years when we first met him, but now seems much older, though the years have also left their mark on Joseph. Ananias hesitates, the decisive manner with which he entered the carpenter’s house changed once they were on the road, and Joseph has to coax him to speak without appearing to pry. We’ve come a long way, he remarked, giving Ananias his cue. This isn’t something I could have discussed in your house or mine, explained Ananias, but now, in this remote place, they can converse freely without fear of being overheard. You once asked me to look after your house in your absence, Ananias reminded him. Yes, replied Joseph, and I deeply appreciated your help. Then Ananias continued, Now the time has come for me to ask you to look after my house while I’m gone. Are you taking your wife. No, I’m going alone. But surely if Shua is staying behind, there’s no need. She’ll be staying with relatives who live in a fishing village. Do you mean to tell me you’re divorcing your wife. No, if I didn’t divorce her when I found that she couldn’t give me a son, why should I divorce her now, it’s just that I will be away for a while and I’d prefer Shua to be with relatives. Will you be gone long. I don’t know, much depends on how long the war lasts. What does the war have to do with your absence, asked Joseph in surprise. I’m going off to look for Judas the Galilean. What do you want from him. To ask him if he’ll allow me to join his army. I don’t believe it, a peace-loving man like you, Ananias, getting involved in the war against the Romans, have you forgotten what happened to Ephraim and Abiezer. And also to Naphtali and Eleazar. Precisely, so listen to the voice of reason. No, you listen to me, Joseph, and to the voice that comes from my lips, I’ve now reached the age at which my father died, and he achieved much more in life than this son of his who couldn’t even beget children, I’m not as learned as you or likely to become an elder in the synagogue, all I have to look forward to is death, and I’m tied to a woman I don’t even love. Then why not divorce her. Divorcing Shua is no problem, the problem is how to divorce myself, and that’s impossible. But how much fighting can you do at your age. Don’t worry, I’ll go into battle as determined as if I were about to get a woman pregnant. I never heard that expression before. Nor I, it came into my head this very minute. Very well, Ananias, you can rely on me to look after your house until you return. Should I not return and news reaches you that I’ve been killed, promise me you’ll send for Shua so that she can claim my possessions. You have my promise. Let’s return now that my mind is at peace. At peace, when you’ve decided to go to war, I really don’t understand you. Ah, Joseph, Joseph, for how many centuries will we have to go on studying the Talmud before we begin to understand the simplest things. Why did we have to come all this way. I wanted to speak to you in the presence of witnesses. The only witnesses we need are Almighty God and this sky that covers us wherever we may be. And what about these stones. These stones are deaf and dumb and cannot bear witness. That may be so, but if you and I were to give a false account of our conversation, these stones would accuse us and go on accusing us until they turned to dust and we to nothingness. Shall we go back. Yes, let’s go.

As they went, Ananias turned around several times to look at the stones, until finally they disappeared behind a hillock, then Joseph asked him, Does Shua know. Yes, she knows. And what did she have to say. At first not a word, then she told me I should have abandoned her years ago and left her to her fate. Poor Shua. Once she’s with relatives, she’ll forget me, and if I die in battle, she’ll forget me forever, forgetting is all too easy, that is life. They entered the village, and when they arrived at the carpenter’s house, which was the first of two houses on one side, Jesus, who was playing in the road with James and Judas, told them his mother was with the neighbor next door. As the two men turned away, the voice of Judas could be heard announcing solemnly, I am Judas the Galilean, whereupon Ananias looked around and said with a smile to Joseph, Take a look, there goes my leader, but before the carpenter had time to reply, the voice of Jesus could be heard saying, Then you don’t belong here. Joseph felt a sword pierce his heart, as if those words were addressed to him, as if the game being played by his son was meant to convey another truth. Then he thought of the three boulders and tried, without knowing why, to imagine what life would be like if henceforth he were obliged to speak every word and perform every action in their presence, and suddenly, remembering God, he was stricken with fear. In Ananias’s house they found Mary consoling a distressed Shua, who dried her tears the moment the men arrived, not because she had stopped weeping but because women know from bitter experience when to hide their tears. Hence the well-known saying, They’re either laughing or weeping, but it simply is not true, because they weep quietly to themselves. But there was nothing quiet about Shua’s grief, and when Ananias departed, she sobbed her heart out. One week later Shua’s relatives came to fetch her. Mary accompanied her to the edge of the village, where they embraced and said good-bye. Shua was no longer weeping, but her eyes would never be dry again. Nothing can ease her sorrow or extinguish the flame that burns her tears before they surface and roll down her cheeks.

T
HE MONTHS PASSED, AND NEWS OF THE WAR CONTINUED
to arrive, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but while the good news never went beyond vague allusions to victories that always turned out to be modest, the bad news spoke of much bloodshed and heavy losses for the rebel army of Judas the Galilean. One day news came that Eldad had been killed when the Romans made a surprise attack on a guerrilla ambush, there were many casualties, but Eldad was the only one from Nazareth to lose his life. Another day someone said he had heard from a friend, who had been told by someone else, that Varus, the Roman governor of Syria, was on his way with two legions to put an end once and for all to this intolerable insurrection that had been dragging on for three years. The statement, Varus is on his way, and the lack of any precise details spread panic among the people. They expected the dreaded insignia of war, which bore the initials SPQR, the Senate and People of Rome, to appear at any moment, heralding the arrival of a punitive force. Under this symbol and that flag, men go forth to kill one another, and the same can be said of those other well-known initials, INRI, Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews, but we must not anticipate events, for the dire consequences of Jesus’ death will emerge only in the fullness of time. Everywhere there is talk of imminent battle, those with more faith in God predict that before the year is out, the Romans will be expelled from the Holy Land of Israel, but others, less confident, sadly shake their heads and foresee nothing but doom and destruction. And so it turned out.

Following the news that Varus’s legions were advancing, nothing happened for several weeks, which allowed the rebels to intensify their attacks on the dispersed troops they were fighting, but the tactics behind this Roman passivity soon became clear, when the scouts of Judas the Galilean reported that one of the legions was heading south in a circular movement, skirting the bank of the river Jordan, then turning right at Jericho to repeat the maneuver northward, like a net cast into the water and retrieved by an experienced hand, or a lasso thrown to capture everything around. And the other legion, carrying out a similar maneuver, was now heading south. A strategy that could be described as a pincer movement, but it was more like two walls closing in simultaneously, knocking down those unable to escape, and finally crushing them. Throughout Judaea and Galilee, the legions’ advance was marked with crosses, to which Judas’s men had been nailed by their wrists and feet, their bones broken with hammers to hasten their death. The soldiers looted the villages and searched every house. No evidence was needed for them to arrest suspects and execute them. These unfortunates, if you will pardon the irony, had the good fortune to be crucified near their homes, so relatives could remove their bodies once they were dead. And what a sad spectacle it was, as mothers, widows, young brides, and weeping orphans watched the bruised corpses being gently lowered from the crosses, for there is nothing more pitiful for the living than the sight of an abandoned body. The crucified man was then carried to his grave to await the day of resurrection. But there were also men wounded in combat, in the mountains or in some other lonely spot, who, though still alive, were left by the soldiers in the most absolute of all deserts, that of solitary death, and there they remained, slowly burnt by the sun, exposed to birds of prey, and after a time stripped of flesh and bone, reduced to repugnant remains without shape or form. Those questioning if not skeptical souls, who resist the facile acceptance of gospels such as these, will ask how it was possible for the Romans to crucify such a large number of Jews in vast arid regions devoid of trees, apart from the rare stunted bush on which you could barely crucify a scarecrow. But they are forgetting that the Roman army has all the professional skills and organization of a modern army. A steady supply of wooden crosses has been maintained throughout the campaign, as witnessed by all these donkeys and mules following the troops and laden with posts and crossbars, which can be assembled on the spot, and then it is simply a question of nailing the condemned man’s extended arms to the crossbar, hoisting the post upright, forcing him to draw in his legs sideways, and securing his two feet, one on top of the other, with a single long nail. Any executioner attached to the legion will tell you that this operation may sound complicated, but it is in fact much more difficult to describe than to carry out.

The pessimists who predicted disaster were right. From north to south and from south to north, men, women, and children flee before the advancing legions, some because they might be accused of having collaborated with the rebels, others simply in terror, for, as we know, they are in danger of being arrested and put to death without a trial. One of these fugitives interrupted his retreat for a few moments to knock on Joseph’s door with a message from Joseph’s
neighbor, Ananias, who had been severely wounded back in Sepphoris. Ananias wanted Joseph to know, The war is lost and there is no hope of escape, send for my wife and tell her to claim my possessions. Is that all he said, asked Joseph. Nothing more, replied the messenger. Why couldn’t you have brought him here with you, when you knew you had to pass this way. In his condition he would have been a hindrance, and I had to put my family’s safety first. First, perhaps, but surely not to the exclusion of everyone else. What are you trying to say, you yourself are surrounded by children, and if you remain here, that can only be because you are in no danger. There’s no time to lose, be on your way and may God go with you, for without Him there is always danger. You sound like a man without faith, for you should know the Lord is everywhere. Indeed, but He often ignores us, and don’t speak to me about faith after abandoning my neighbor to his fate. Well, then, why not go and rescue him yourself. That’s exactly what I intend to do. This conversation took place in the middle of the afternoon. It was a fine, sunny day, with a few white clouds drifting across the sky like unmanned barges. Joseph went to untie the donkey, called his wife, and told her without further explanation, I’m off to Sepphoris to look for our neighbor, Ananias, who’s been badly wounded and cannot make the journey on his own. Mary simply nodded in reply, but Jesus clung to his father and pleaded, Take me with you. Joseph looked at his son, placed his right hand on the boy’s head, and told him, You stay here, I’ll be back soon, if I make good time, I should be back before dawn, and he could be right, for the distance between Nazareth and Sepphoris cannot be much more than five miles, about the same distance as from Jerusalem to Bethlehem, additional proof that the world is full of coincidences. Joseph did not mount the donkey, he wanted the animal to be fresh for the return journey, firm and steady on its feet and prepared to carry a sick man gently, or, to be precise, a wounded soldier, which is not quite the same thing.