The Last Temptation of Christ (36 page)

But he shook himself, banished the temptation, pulled himself away from the bridge and, descending with quick steps, disappeared behind the bleak rocks. The redbeard stood on the shore keeping constant watch over him. He saw him disappear and, fearing that he might escape, rolled up his sleeves and followed behind, overtaking him just as he was about to enter the endless sea of sand.

“Son of David, stop!” he called to him. “Why are you leaving me like this?”

Jesus turned. “Judas, my brother,” he said supplicatingly, “do not come farther. I must be alone.”

“I want to learn your secret!” said Judas, advancing.

“Don’t be in a hurry. You will learn it when the time comes. But I’ll tell you this much, Judas, my brother: be happy, everything is going well!”

“ ‘Everything is going well’ is not enough for me. A wolf’s hunger is not appeased with words. Maybe you don’t know that, but I do.”

“If you love me, be patient. Look at the trees. Are they in a hurry to ripen their fruit?”

“I’m not a tree, I’m a man,” the redbeard objected, coming closer. “I’m a man, and that means a thing which is in a hurry. I go by my own laws.”

“The law of God is the same, whether for trees or men, Judas.”

The redbeard ground his teeth. “And what is that law called?” he asked sarcastically.

“Time.”

Judas stood still and clenched his fist. He did not accept this law. Its pace was excessively slow, whereas he had not a moment to lose. The depths of his being held to another law, his own, opposite to that of Time.

“God lives for many years,” he shouted. “He is immortal; he can be patient therefore and wait. But I’m human, a thing, I tell you, that’s in a hurry. I don’t want to die before I see what I have now only in my mind—not only see it, but touch it with my hands!”

“You shall see it,” answered Jesus, waving his hand to calm him. “You shall see and touch it, Judas, my brother—have faith. Goodbye! God is waiting for me in the desert.”

“I’ll come along.”

“The desert is not big enough for two. Go back.”

The redbeard growled and bared his teeth like a sheep dog that hears his master’s voice. Head bowed, he turned around and marched heavily over the bridge, talking to himself. He remembered when he roamed the mountains with Barabbas—God bless him!—and the other rebels. What an atmosphere of ferocity and freedom! What a splendid leader of cutthroats was the God of Israel! That was the kind of leader he needed. Why did he follow this clairvoyant who was scared of blood and shouted “Love! Love!” like a panting young girl? But let’s be patient, Judas reflected, and see what he brings back from the desert!

Jesus had now entered the desert. The more he advanced, the more he felt he had gone into a lion’s cave. He shuddered, not from fear, but from a dark, inexplicable joy. He was happy. Why? He could not explain it. Suddenly, he remembered, remembered a dream he had one night when he was still a child hardly able to talk. It seemed thousands of years ago: the earliest dream he was able to recall. He had worked his way into a deep cave and found a lioness who had given birth and was suckling her cubs. When he saw her, he grew hungry and thirsty, lay down and began to suckle with the lion cubs. Afterward it seemed that they all went out to a meadow and began to play in the sun, but while they were frisking, Mary, his mother, appeared in his dream, saw him with the lions and screamed. He awoke and turned angrily to his mother, who was sleeping at his side. Why did you wake me up? he shouted at her. I was with my brothers and my mother!

Now I understand why I am happy, he reflected. I am entering my mother’s cave, the cave of the lioness, of solitude. ...

He heard the disquieting hiss of snakes, and of the burning wind which blew between the rocks, and of the invisible spirits of the desert.

Jesus bent over and spoke to his soul. “My soul, here you will show whether or not you are immortal.”

Hearing steps behind him, he cocked his ear. There was the crunching of sand. Someone was walking toward him, calmly, surely. I forgot her, he thought, shuddering, but she did not forget me. She is coming with me; my mother is coming with me. ... He knew very well that it was the Curse, but he had been calling her Mother to himself now for such a long time.

He marched on, forcing his thoughts elsewhere. He recalled the wild dove. A savage bird seemed to be imprisoned within him-or was it his soul rushing to escape? Perhaps it had escaped; perhaps the wild dove which chirped and flew circles over him the whole time he was being baptized was his soul, not a bird or a Seraph, but his own soul.

This was the answer. He started out again, calm. He heard the footsteps behind him crunching the sand, but his heart was steady now; he could at last endure everything with dignity. Man’s soul, he reflected, is all-powerful; it can take on whatever appearance it likes. At that instant it became a bird and flew over me. ... But as he marched tranquilly along, suddenly he cried out and stopped. The thought had come to him that perhaps the dove was an illusion, a buzzing in his ear, a whirling of the air—because he remembered how his body had gleamed, light and omnipotent, like a soul, how whatever he wanted to hear he had heard, whatever he wanted to see he had seen. ... He had built castles in the air. “O God, O God,” he murmured, “now that we shall be alone, tell me the truth, do not deceive me. I am weary of hearing voices in the air.

He advanced and the sun advanced with him. It had finally reached the top of the sky, directly above his head. His feet were burning in the fiery sand. He spied around him to find some shade, and as he did so, he heard wings flapping above him and saw a flock of crows rush into a pit where there was a stinking black object in the process of decay.

Holding his nose, he approached. The crows had fallen upon the carcass, planted their claws in it, and begun to eat. When they saw a man approach they flew away angrily, each with a mouthful of flesh in its talons. They circled in the air, calling to the intruder to go away. Jesus leaned over, saw the opened belly, the black, half-stripped hide, the short knotted horns, the strings of amulets around the putrid neck.

“The goat!” he murmured with a shudder. “The sacred goat that bore the people’s sins. He was chased from village to village, mountain to mountain, and finally to the desert, where he perished.”

He bent over, dug in the sand as deeply as he could with his hands, and covered the carcass.

“My brother,” he said, “you were innocent and pure, like every animal. But men, the cowards, made you bear their sins, and killed you. Rot in peace; feel no malice against them. Men, poor weak creatures, have not the courage to pay for their sins themselves: they place them upon one who is sinless. My brother, requite their sins. Farewell!”

He resumed his march but stopped after a few moments, troubled. Waving his hand, he called, “Until we meet again!”

The crows began to pursue him maniacally. He had deprived them of the tasty carcass and now they were following him, waiting for him to perish in his turn and for his belly to split open so that they could eat. What right did he have to do them this injustice? Had not God designed crows to eat carcasses? He must pay!

Night was coming at last. Tired, he squatted on a rock which was as large and round as a millstone. “I shall go no farther,” he murmured. “Here on this rock I shall set up my bulwark and do battle.” The darkness flowed abruptly down from the sky, rose up from the soil, covered the earth. And with the darkness came the frost. His teeth chattering, he wrapped himself in his white robe, curled up into a ball and closed his eyes. But as he closed them, he grew frightened. He recalled the crows, heard the famished jackals begin to howl on every side, felt the desert prowling around him like a wild beast. Afraid, he reopened his eyes. The sky had filled with stars, and he felt comforted. The Seraphim have come out to keep me company, he said to himself. They are the six-winged lights which sing psalms around God’s throne, but they are far away, so very far away that we cannot hear them. ... His mind illuminated by starlight, he forgot his hunger and cold. He too was a living thing, an ephemeral beacon in the darkness; he too sang hymns to God. His soul was a small pharos, the humble, poorly dressed sister of the angels. ... Thinking of his high extraction, he took heart, saw his soul standing together with the angels around God’s throne; and then, peacefully and without fear, he closed his eyes and slept.

When he awoke he lifted his face toward the east and saw the sun, a terrible blast furnace, rising above the sand. That is God’s face, he reflected, putting his palm over his eyes so that he would not be dazzled. “Lord,” he whispered, “I am a grain of sand; can you see me in this desert? I am a grain of sand which talks and breathes and loves you—loves you and calls you Father. I possess no weapon but love. With that I have come to do battle. Help me!”

He rose. With his reed he inscribed a circle around the rock where he had slept.

“I shall not leave this threshing floor,” he said loudly, so that the invisible forces which were lying in wait for him could hear, “I shall not leave this threshing floor unless I hear God’s voice. But I must hear it clearly; I won’t be satisfied with the usual unsteady hum or twittering or thunder. I want him to speak to me clearly, with human words, and to tell me what he desires from me and what I can, what I must, do. Only then will I get up and leave this threshing floor to return to men, if that is his command, or to die, if that is his will. I’ll do whatever he wishes, but I must know what it is. In God’s name!”

He knelt on the rock with his face toward the sun, toward the great desert. He closed his eyes, remassed those of his thoughts which had lingered at Nazareth, Magdala, Capernaum, Jacob’s well and the river Jordan, and began to put them in battle array. He was preparing for war.

With his neck tensed and his eyelids closed, he sank within himself. He heard the roar of water, the rustling of reeds, the lamentations of men. From the river Jordan came wave after wave of cries, terror and faraway visionary hopes. First to stand up in his mind were the three long nights he had spent on the rock with the wild ascetic. In full armor, they rushed to the desert to enter the war at his side.

The first night jumped down on top of him like a monstrous locust with cruel wheat-yellow eyes and wings, breath like the Dead Sea and strange green letters on its abdomen. It clung to him; its wings began furiously to rend the air. Jesus cried out and turned. The Baptist was standing next to him with his bony arm pointing in the heavy darkness toward Jerusalem.

“Look. What do you see?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? In front of you is holy Jerusalem, the whore. Don’t you see her? She sits and giggles on the Roman’s fat knees. The Lord cries, ‘I do not want her. Is this my wife? I do not want her!’ I too, like a dog at the Lord’s feet, bark, ‘I do not want her!’ I walk around her towers and walls and bark at her, ‘Whore! Whore!’ She has four great fortress gates. At the first sits Hunger, at the next Fear, at the third Injustice, and at the fourth, the northern one, Infamy. I enter, go up and down her streets; I approach her inhabitants and examine them. Regard their faces: three are heavy, fat, over-satiated; three thousand emaciated from hunger. When does a world disappear? When three masters overeat and a people of three thousand starves to death. Look at their faces once more. Fear sits on all of them; their nostrils quiver; they scent the day of the Lord. Regard the women. Even the most honest glances secretly at her slave, licks her chops and nods to him: Come!

“I have unroofed their palaces. Look. The king holds his brother’s wife on his knee and caresses her nakedness. What do the Holy Scriptures say? ‘He who looks at the nakedness of his brother’s wife—
death
!’ It is not he, the incestuous king, who will be killed, but I, the ascetic. Why—because the day of the Lord has come!”

The whole of that first night Jesus sat at the Baptist’s feet and watched Hunger, Fear, Injustice and Infamy go in and out of Jerusalem’s four opened gates. Over the holy prostitute the clouds were gathering, full of anger and hail.

The second night the Baptist once more stretched forth his reed-like hand and with a thrust pushed through time and space. “Listen. What do you hear?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing! Don’t you hear Iniquity, the bitch who has climbed shamelessly up to heaven and is barking at the Lord’s door? Haven’t you been through Jerusalem, haven’t you seen the yelping priests, high priests, Scribes and Pharisees who surround the Temple? But God endures the earth’s impudence no longer. He has risen; he is tramping down the mountainsides and coming. In front of him is Anger; behind him are heaven’s three bitches, Fire, Leprosy and Madness. Where is the Temple with the proud, gold-inlaid columns which supported it and proclaimed: Eternal! Eternal! Eternal! Ashes the Temple, ashes the priests, high priests, Scribes and Pharisees, ashes their holy amulets, their silken cassocks and golden rings! Ashes! Ashes! Ashes!

“Where is Jerusalem? I hold a lighted lantern, I search in the mountains, in the Lord’s darkness; I shout, ‘Jerusalem! Jerusalem!’ Deserted, completely forsaken: not even a crow answers—the crows have eaten, and left. I wade knee-deep in the skulls and bones; tears come to my eyes, but I push the bones away and banish them. I laugh, bend down and choose the longest one, make a flute and hymn the glory of the Lord.”

The whole of the second night the Baptist laughed, stood in God’s darkness and admired Fire, Leprosy and Madness. Jesus grasped the prophet’s knees. “Cannot salvation come to the world by means of love?” he asked. “By means of love, joy, mercy?”

The Baptist, without even turning to look at him, replied, “Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? The Saviour crushes our loins, breaks our teeth, hurls fire and scorches the fields-all in order to sow. And he uproots the thorns, stinkweeds and nettles. How can you wipe out falsehood, infamy and injustice from the world if you do not eradicate the liars, the unjust, the wicked? The earth must be cleansed—don’t pity it—it must be cleansed, made ready for the planting of new seed.”