The Last Temptation of Christ (19 page)

“It’s him, it’s him!” the fishermen shouted. “Welcome to your son!”

Now the rider was passing in front of them, waving his hand to greet them.

“John,” cried the old father, “why in such a rush? Where are you going? Stop a minute and let us see you!”

“The Abbot is dying; I haven’t time.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“He doesn’t want to eat; he wants to die.”

“Why? Why?”

But the rider’s words were lost in the air.

Old Zebedee coughed, thought for a moment and then shook his head. “The Lord preserve us from sainthood,” he said.

The son of Mary watched Jacob descend with angry strides toward Capernaum; then he collapsed to the ground, legs crossed, his heart filled with grievance. Why did he, who yearned so much to love and be loved, why did he awaken so much hatred in the hearts of men? It was his own fault; not God’s, not men’s, but his own. Why did he behave so cowardly, why did he choose a road to follow and then lack the courage to pursue it to its end? He was a cripple, a pitiful coward. Why didn’t he dare take Magdalene as his wife, to save her from shame and death; and when God clawed him and commanded him to rise, why did he cling to the ground and refuse to get up? And now, why was he governed by fear and going to the desert to hide? Did he think God would not find him there as well as anywhere else?

The sun stood nearly above his head. The lamentation for the wheat had stopped. These tormented people were already used to calamities: they recalled that their wailing had never brought a cure, and were quiet. For thousands of years they had suffered injustice, gone hungry, been tossed about by forces both visible and invisible. But somehow they limped through life, always managing to make ends meet—and this had taught them patience.

A green lizard emerged from a squat bush. It had come out to sun itself. When it saw this terrifying man-beast above it, its heart took fright and began to thump, just below the neck; but the reptile nerved itself, glued the whole length of its body to the warm rock, shifted its round, jet-black eye and gazed with confidence at the son of Mary, as though welcoming him or saying, I saw you were alone, so I came to keep you company. Rejoicing, the son of Mary held his breath so that he would not frighten the visitor; but while he watched it, feeling his own heart thump like the lizard’s, two fuzzy butterflies, both black and splashed with red, fluttered down between them and flew back and forth from one to the other, not wanting to leave. They danced gleefully, frolicking in the sun, and at the very last alighted on the man’s bloodied kerchief with their proboscises over the red spots, as though they wished to suck up the blood. Feeling their caress on the top of his head, he recalled God’s talons, and it seemed to him that these and the butterfly wings brought him the identical message. Ah, if only God could always descend to man not as a thunderbolt or a clawing vulture but as a butterfly!

And just as he joined butterflies and God in his mind, he felt something tickle the soles of his feet. He looked down and saw a preoccupied swarm of fat yellow-black ants filing hurriedly under his arches. Working in groups of twos or threes, they were carrying away the wheat in their roomy mandibles, one grain at a time. They had stolen it from the plain, right out of the mouths of men, and were transporting it now to their anthill, all the while praising God the Great Ant, who, ever solicitous for his Chosen People the ants, sent floods to the plain at precisely the right moment, just when the wheat was stacked upon the threshing floors.

The son of Mary sighed. Ants are God’s creatures too, he reflected, and so are men, and lizards, and the grasshoppers I hear in the olive grove and the jackals who howl during the night, and floods, and hunger. ...

He heard someone puffing behind him. Terror took hold of him. He had forgotten her for such a long time, but she had not forgotten him. He could now feel her in back of him, seated cross-legged like himself and breathing heavily.

“The Curse is God’s creature too,” he murmured.

He felt completely enveloped in God’s breath. It blew over him, sometimes warm and benevolent, sometimes savage, merciless. Lizard, butterflies, ants, Curse—all were God.

Hearing voices and bells along the road, he turned. A long camel caravan laden with expensive merchandise was passing by, led by a humble donkey. This caravan must have started from Nineveh and Babylon, the rich river valley of the patriarch Abraham, and come across desert transporting silks, spices, ivory and perhaps male and female slaves to the many-colored ships of the Great Sea.

The procession filed by; it seemed to have no end. What riches these people have, the son of Mary thought, what marvels! Finally, at the caravan’s tail, the rich black-bearded merchants appeared with their golden earrings, their green turbans and flowing white jellabs. They were passing in front of him now, rolling and pitching with the swaying jog of the camels.

The son of Mary shuddered. It suddenly occurred to him that they would stop at Magdala. Magdalene’s door is open day and night and they will enter, he said to himself. I must save you, Magdalene—oh, if I could only do it!—you, Magdalene, not the race of Israel: that I cannot save. I’m no prophet. If I open my mouth, I have no idea what to say. God did not anoint my lips with burning coals, did not cast his thunderbolt into my bowels to make me burn, rush frenzied into the streets and begin to shout. ... I want the words to be his, not mine: I want nothing to do with them. I’ll simply open my mouth, and he’ll do the talking. No, I’m no prophet; I’m just a plain, ordinary man who’s scared of everything: I can’t drag you out of the bed of shame, Magdalene, so I’m going to the desert, to the monastery, to pray for you. Prayer is all-powerful. They say that during the wars, as long as Moses kept his hands raised to heaven, the sons of Israel conquered, and as soon as he grew tired and lowered them, they were defeated. ... Magdalene, I shall keep my hands raised to heaven for you day and night.

He looked up to see when the sun was going to set. He wanted to continue on in darkness so that he could get past Capernaum without being seen by a soul and then go around the lake and enter the desert. He was growing more and more anxious to arrive.

“Oh, if I could only walk over the waters and go directly across the lake!” he murmured, sighing once more.

The lizard was still sunning itself, glued to the warm rock. The butterflies had flown up high and disappeared into the light. The ants continued to transport the harvest. They shoveled it into their granaries, went hastily back to the fields and returned with new loads. The sun was ready to set. The passers-by grew scarcer; shadows lengthened; the evening fell upon trees and soil, gilding them. On the lake, the water was in perfect confusion: at the twinkling of an eye it altered its appearance—reddened, turned light violet, darkened. One large star hung in the western skies.

Now night will come, the son of Mary reflected; now God’s black daughter will arrive with her caravan of stars; and before the stars had a chance to come out and fill the sky, they filled his mind.

He had already begun to get ready to rise and resume his journey when he heard a horn behind him. A passer-by was calling him by name. He turned and in the thin light of the evening discerned someone signaling to him and mounting the slope, loaded down with an immense bundle. Who can it be? he asked himself, struggling to make out the wayfarer’s features beneath the bundle. Somewhere he had seen that pale face and short, scanty beard and those thin, crooked shanks before. Suddenly he cried out, “Is that you, Thomas? Have you started your circuit of the villages again?”

The wily, cross-eyed peddler stood in front of him now, panting. He placed his bundle on the ground and sponged the sweat from his pointed forehead and the tiny wry eyes whose ambivalent dance left you unable to tell whether they were rejoicing or scoffing.

The son of Mary liked him very much. He often saw him pass by his workshop on his way back from his rounds, the horn thrust under his belt. He would throw his bundle down on a bench and begin to talk about everything he had seen. He sneered, he laughed, he teased; he had faith neither in the God of Israel nor in any other god. They all jeer at us, he would say; they all jeer at us to make us slaughter kids for them, burn them sweet incense and shout ourselves hoarse hymning their beauty. ... The son of Mary listened to him, and his constricted heart relaxed a little: he admired this roguish mind which, despite all its poverty and all the slavery and misery of its race, found strength to conquer the slavery and the poverty by means of laughter and mockery.

And Thomas the peddler liked the son of Mary. He looked upon him as a naïve sheep, sickly and bleating, seeking God in order to hide behind his shadow.

“You’re a sheep, son of Mary,” he said to him regularly, splitting with laughter, “but you’ve got a wolf inside you, and this wolf is going to eat you up!” Then from under his shirt he would take a handful of dates or a pomegranate or an apple he had stolen from the orchard, and treat him.

“It’s good to see you,” he said now, as soon as he had caught his breath. “God loves you. Where are you going?”

“To the monastery,” Jesus replied, pointing toward the lake.

“Well, then, it’s doubly good to see you. Turn back!”

“Why? God—”

But Thomas exploded. “Do me a favor and don’t start up again about God. Where he’s concerned there are no boundaries. You walk all your life, this one and the next, trying to reach him, but the blessed fellow has no end. So forget about him and don’t mix him up in our affairs. Listen to me: here we’ve got to deal with man—with dishonest, seven-times-shrewd man. To begin with, watch out for Judas the redbeard. Before I left Nazareth I saw him whispering with the mother of the crucified Zealot, then with Barabbas and two or three other knife-wielding cronies of his from the brotherhood. I heard them mention your name, so watch out, son of Mary: don’t go to the monastery.”

But Jesus bowed his head. “Every living thing is in God’s hands. He decides whom he wants to save, whom he wants to slay. What resistance can we offer? I shall go, and may God help me!”

“You’ll go?” shouted Thomas in a rage. “But right now, right now as we talk, Judas is at the monastery with his knife hidden under his shirt. Do you carry a knife?”

The son of Mary shuddered. “No,” he said. “What use should I have for one?”

Thomas laughed. “Sheep ... sheep ... sheep ...” he murmured. He picked up his bundle. “Farewell. Do what you like. I tell you to turn back, and you say, ‘I shall go!’ All right, go—and kick yourself afterward when it’s too late!”

With a twinkle in his tiny wry eyes he started back down the slope, whistling.

The night now fell in earnest. The ground darkened, the lake sank away; in Capernaum the first lamps were lighted. The birds of the day had already buried their heads in their wings and gone to sleep; the night birds, awakening, began to go out on the hunt.

This is a holy hour, a good time to leave, thought the son of Mary. No one will see me—so let’s be off!

He recalled Thomas’s words.

“Whatever God wills, that is what will happen,” he murmured. “If God is the one who’s pushing me to go find my murderer, then let me go quickly and be killed. That, at least, I am able to do, and I’m doing it.” He turned and looked behind him.

“Let’s go,” he said to his invisible companion, and he set out toward the lake.

The night was sweet, warm, damp; a gentle wind blew from the south. Capernaum smelled of fish and jasmine. Old Zebedee sat in the courtyard of his house with his wife Salome, under the large almond tree. They had finished their meal and were chatting. Inside, their son Jacob twisted and turned on his mattress. Tangled up in his mind and infuriating his heart were the crucified Zealot, the new injustice God had done the people in taking their wheat, and the son of Mary, who had sold himself as a spy. These thoughts did not let him sleep; and his father’s chattering outside infuriated him that much more. Boiling over with rage, he jumped to his feet, went out into the yard and strode across the threshold.

“Where are you going?” his mother called to him anxiously.

“To the lake to catch a breath of fresh air,” he growled, and he vanished into the darkness.

Old Zebedee shook his head and sighed.

“The world isn’t what it used to be, wife,” he said. “Today the young folk are too big for their skins. They’re neither birds nor fish; they’re flying fish. The sea is too small for them, so they fly into the air. But they can’t last long there, so they plunge back down into the sea and then start all over again from the beginning. They’ve gone out of their minds. Why, just look at our son John, your darling. I’m for the monastery, he tells us. Prayers, fasting, God ... The fishing boat looks much too narrow to him—he can’t possibly fit in. And now here’s the other one, Jacob, whom I thought had some sense in his head. Mark my words: he’s fixed the rudder in the same direction. Didn’t you see tonight how he got all heated up, ready to burst, and how the house was too small for him? All right, it doesn’t matter to me, but who’s going to look after my boats and the men? Is all my toil going to go to waste? Wife, I’m troubled; bring me a little wine and a snack of octopus to restore my spirits.”

Old Salome played deaf. Her old husband had drunk quite enough already. She tried to change the subject. “They’re young,” she said. “Don’t let it worry you; it will blow over.”

“By gad, wife, you’re right! You’ve a fertile head on your shoulders. Why do I sit here getting a headache? That’s it: they’re young, it will blow over. Youth is a sickness; it passes. When I was young there were times when I too got all heated up and twisted and turned on my bed. I thought I was looking for God, but I was really looking for a wife—for you, Salome! I got married and calmed down. Our sons will do the same, so don’t give it another thought! I’m content now. ... Wife, bring me a snack and some octopus; and bring me a bit of wine, dear Salome—I want to drink to your health!”

In the adjoining neighborhood, a little farther on, old Jonah sat all alone in his cottage and mended his nets by the light of the lamp. He mended and mended, but his mind and thoughts were not on his dear departed wife, who had died at this time a year before, nor on his halfwit of a son Andrew, nor on that prize cow-brained nitwit, his other son Peter, who still went the rounds of the taverns of Nazareth, having left his father high and dry, old man that he was, to wrestle all alone with the fish. No, he was thinking of Zebedee’s words and laboring under a great inquietude. Perhaps he really was the prophet Jonah. He looked at his hands, feet, thighs: all scales. Even his breath and sweat smelled of fish, and now he remembered that the other day when he wept on account of his wife, his tears had smelled of fish too. And sly old Zebedee was right about the crabs: once in a while he found some in his beard. ... Perhaps he was the prophet Jonah after all. Ah! that explained why he was never in the mood to talk, why the words had to be dragged out of him with a grapnel, why he always stumbled and tripped when he walked on dry land. But when he plunged into the lake: what a relief that was, what joy! The water lifted him up in its bosom, caressed him, licked him, purred in his ear and spoke to him; and he, like the fish, answered it without words, and bubbles came out of his mouth!