The Last Temptation of Christ

Chapter Thirty-Three

JESUS SAT under the ancient vine arbor in his yard, his white beard flowing over his uncovered chest. It was the day of the Passover. He had bathed, scented his hair, beard and armpits, and changed into clean clothes. The door was shut; there was no one near him. His wives, children and grandchildren laughed and played in the back part of the house; the Negro, who had climbed the eaves at dawn, gazed toward Jerusalem, silent and angry.

Jesus looked at his hands. They had grown extremely fat and gnarled. The blue-black desiccated veins stood out, and on the back of each hand the old mysterious wound had begun to fade and disappear. He shook his white, coarse-featured head and sighed.

“How quickly the years have gone by, how I’ve aged! And not only I, but my wives and the trees of my yard and the doors and windows and the stones I step on.”

Frightened, he shut his eyes and felt Time run like water from its high source-his mind-down through his neck, breast, loins and thighs, and flow out finally through the soles of his feet.

Hearing footsteps in the yard, he opened his eyes. It was Mary. She had seen him plunged in meditation and had come and seated herself at his feet. Jesus placed his hand on her hair, the raven-black hair which now, like his, had turned white. An inexpressible tenderness took possession of him. In my hands she became white, he reflected, in my hands she became white…

He bent over and spoke to her. “Do you remember, beloved Mary, do you remember how many times the swallows have come since the blessed day I crossed the threshold of your house as its master, and since I made my way, as husband, into your womb? How many times have we sown together, reaped, vintaged and gathered the olives? Your hair has turned white, Mary dearest, and so has the hair of courageous Martha.”

“Yes, Beloved, we have turned white,” Mary answered. “The years go by. We planted this vine whose shade we’re sitting under now, we planted it the year that accursed hunchback came, the one who threw a spell over you and made you faint-do you remember? How many years have we been eating these grapes?”

The Negro slid down from the edge of the roof without a sound and stepped in front of them. Mary got up and left. She did not like this strange adopted child. He did not grow, he did not age; he was not a man, he was a spirit, an evil spirit that had entered the house and would not leave again. And she did not like his derisive, frolicking eyes, nor his secret conversations with Jesus during the night.

The Negro approached, his eyes all mockery. His teeth were flashing, sharp and white. “Jesus of Nazareth,” he said softly, “the end is near.”

Surprised, Jesus turned. “What end?”

The Negro put his finger to his lips. “The end is near,” he repeated. He squatted opposite Jesus and looked at him, laughing.

“Are you leaving me?” Jesus asked, and he suddenly felt strangely glad and relieved.

“Yes, the end has come. Why are you smiling, Jesus of Nazareth?”

“Have a nice trip. I’ve got from you what I wanted: I don’t need you any more.”

“Is this the way you say goodbye to me? Can you be so ungrateful? All my years of toil for your sake, all my efforts to give you every joy you desired: were these efforts in vain?”

“If your purpose was to smother me in honey, like a bee, your pains have gone to waste. I’ve eaten all the honey I wanted, all I could, but I did not dip in my wings.”

“What wings, clairvoyant?”

“My Soul.”

The Negro guffawed maliciously. “Wretch, do you think you have a soul?”

“I have. And it doesn’t need guardian angels or Negro boys: it is free.”

The guardian angel went wild with rage. “Rebel!” he howled. He pulled up a stone from the courtyard, crumbled it between his palms and scattered the dust into the air.

“All right,” he said, “we shall see,” and he drew toward the door, cursing.

Wild cries, wailing, lamentation… Horses neighed; the highway filled with flocks of running people. “Jerusalem is burning!” they shouted. “They’ve taken Jerusalem! We’re lost!”

The Romans had besieged the city for months, but the Israelites placed their hopes in Jehovah. They were secure. The holy city could not burn, the holy city had no fears; an angel with a scimitar stood at each of her gates. And now…

The women dashed into the street, screaming and pulling their hair. The men tore their clothes and shouted for God to appear. Jesus rose, took Mary and Martha by the hand, brought them inside and bolted the door.

“Why do you cry?” he said to them compassionately. “Why do you resist God’s will? Listen to what I shall tell you, and do not be afraid. Time is a fire, beloved wives. Time is a fire, and God holds the spit. Each year he rotates one paschal lamb. This year the paschal lamb is Jerusalem; next year it will be Rome; the following year-”

“Be quiet, Rabbi,” Mary screamed. “You forget that we’re women, and weak.”

“Forgive me, Mary,” said Jesus. “I forgot. When the heart takes the uphill road it forgets, and has no mercy.”

While he spoke, heavy steps were heard outside in the street. There was the sound of gasping breaths, and thick staffs knocked loudly on the door.

The Negro jumped up, seized the bolt of the door, looked at Jesus and smiled mockingly. “Shall I open?” he asked, hardly able to restrain his laughter. “It’s your old companions, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“My old companions?”

“You shall see them!” said the Negro, and he threw the door wide open.

A cluster of tiny old men appeared in the doorway. Deteriorated and unrecognizable, they crept into the yard, one leaning against the other. It seemed as though they were glued together and could not be torn apart.

Jesus advanced one pace and stopped. He wanted to extend his hand to bid them welcome, but suddenly his soul felt crushed by an unbearable bitterness-by bitterness, indignation and pity. He clenched his fists and waited. There was a heavy effluvium from charred wood, singed hair and open wounds. The air stank. The Negro had climbed up onto the horse block. He watched them and laughed.

Taking one step more, Jesus turned to the old man who crept in the lead. “You, in front,” he said, “come here. Stand still while I push away the ruins of time and see who you are. My heart pounds, but this hanging flesh, these eyes filled with discharge-I do not know them.”

“Don’t you recognize me, my rabbi?”

“Peter! Are you the rock on which, once upon a time in the folly of my youth, I wanted to build my church? How you’ve degenerated, son of Jonah! No longer a rock but a sponge full of holes!”

“The years, my rabbi…”

“What years? The years are not to blame. As long as the soul stands erect it holds the body high and does not allow the years to touch it. Your soul has declined, Peter, your soul!”

“The troubles of the world came upon me. I married, had children, received wounds, saw Jerusalem burn… I’m human: all that broke me.”

“Yes, you’re human and all that broke you,” Jesus murmured with sympathy. “Poor Peter, in the state the world’s in today, you have to be both God and the devil to endure.”

He turned to the next one, who emerged from behind Peter’s shoulder. “And you?” he said. “They cut off your nose: your face has become a skull-all holes. How do you expect me to recognize you? Go on, old companion, speak. Say ‘Rabbi!’ and perhaps I shall remember who you are!”

The ramshackle form uttered a tremendous cry: “Rabbi!” and then lowered its head and was still.

“Jacob! Zebedee’s eldest son, the massive colossus, the mind set solidly foursquare!”

“His remains, Rabbi,” said Jacob, sniveling. “A wild storm crippled me. The keel cracked, the hull opened, the mast fell. I return to port a wreck.”

“What port?”

“You, Rabbi.”

“What can I do for you? I am not a shipyard where you can be caulked. What I shall say, Jacob, is hard, but just: the only port for you is the bottom of the sea. As your father used to say, two and two make four.”

He was suddenly overcome with indignation and intense sorrow. He turned to a second chaplet of old men. “And you three? Ho, you, you, the gawky bean-stalk: once upon a time weren’t you Nathanael? You’ve grown flabby. Just look at your bloated, dangling backside, belly and double chins! What did you do with your firm muscles, Nathanael? You are nothing but the skeleton of a three-storied house now. Yes, only scaffolding remains, but do not sigh-that is enough, Nathanael, to get you to heaven.”

But Nathanael became angry. “What heaven? It wasn’t bad enough I lost my ears, fingers and one eye! No, besides that, everything you pounded into us: the pomp, strutting, majesty, kingdom of heaven-the whole lot was drunkenness and now we’ve sobered up! What do you think, Philip? Am I right?”

“What can I say, Nathanael,” said a tiny old man lost in the middle of the pile. “What can I say, brother! It’s I who have to answer for your joining us!”

Jesus shook his head sympathetically and took the hand of this tiny old man they called Philip. “I fell hopelessly in love with you, Philip, best of all shepherds, because you had no sheep. You possessed only the shepherd’s crook and you herded the air. At night you took out the winds and put them to pasture. In your imagination you lighted fires, in your imagination you set up the great cauldrons, boiled the milk and sent it flowing from the top of the mountain down to the plain, so that the poor could drink. All your wealth was within your heart. Outside: poverty, hootings, solitude and hunger. That is what it means to be my disciple! And now… Philip, Philip, best of all shepherds, how you’ve fallen! You longed, alas, for real sheep, sheep whose wool, whose flesh, you could grasp in your hand-and you perished!”

“I get hungry,” Philip replied. “What do you expect me to do?”

“Think of God and you shall be filled!” Jesus answered, and then suddenly his heart hardened again.

He turned to a hunched-over old man who had collapsed into the watering trough and remained there, shivering. He lifted the rags which covered him, pushed aside his eyebrows, but could not understand who he was. When he searched under the hair, however, he found a large ear with an age-old broken quill behind it. He laughed.

“Welcome to the immense ear,” he said, greeting him. “Huge, erect, full of hairs, it used to quiver like a rabbit’s, all fear, curiosity and hunger. Welcome to the inky fingers and the inkstand heart! Do you still fill papers with blots, Matthew, my scribe? The quill, completely broken, is still behind your ear. Did you wage war using this as your lance?”

“Why do you jeer at me,” said the other with a bitter taste on his lips. “Will you never stop ridiculing us? Think of the magnificence with which I began to write your life and times. I too would have become immortal, along with you. And now, the peacock has lost his feathers. It wasn’t a peacock; it was a chicken. What a shame I worked so hard!”

Jesus suddenly felt his knees go slack. He bowed his head; but then, quickly, angrily, he raised it and pointed his finger threateningly at Matthew.

“Quiet!” he said. “How dare you!”

An emaciated, cross-eyed old man appeared between Nathanael’s legs and chuckled. Jesus turned, saw him and recognized him immediately.

“Thomas, my seven-month babe, welcome! Where did you sow your teeth? What did you do with the two hairs you had on your scalp? And from what goat did you uproot that greasy little beard which hangs from your chin? Two-faced, seven-eyed, all-cunning Thomas, is it you?”

“In person! Only the teeth are missing-they fell out along the way-and the two hairs. Everything else is in order.”

“The mind?”

“A true cock. It mounts the dung heap knowing well enough It isn’t the one who brings the sun, but it crows nevertheless every morning and brings it-because it knows the right time to crow.

“And did you fight too, hero of heroes, to save Jerusalem?”

“Me fight? Am I stupid? I played the prophet.”

“The prophet? So the tiny ant-mind grew wings? Did God blow upon you?”

“What has God got to do with this? My intellect, all by itself, found the secret.”

“What secret?”

“What being a prophet means. Your holiness also knew it once, but I think you’ve forgotten.”

“Well, sly Thomas, remind me-it might come in handy again. What is a prophet?”

“A prophet is the one who, when everyone else despairs, hopes. And when everyone else hopes, he despairs. You’ll ask me why. It’s because he has mastered the Great Secret: that the Wheel turns.

“It’s a dangerous thing for a man to talk with you, Thomas,” Jesus said, winking at him. “Inside your tiny, quick-moving crossed eyes I perceive a tail, two horns-and a spark of burning light.”

“True light burns, Rabbi-you know that, but you pity mankind. The heart takes pity: that’s why the world finds itself in darkness. The mind does not take pity: that’s why the world is on fire… Ah, you nod to me to be still. You’re right; I’ll be still. We mustn’t uncover such secrets in front of these simple souls. None of them has any endurance, except one: him!”

“Who is that?”

Thomas dragged himself as far as the street door and pointed, without touching him, to a colossus who stood on the threshold like a withered, lightning-charred tree. The roots of his hair and beard were still red.

“Him!” he said, shrinking back. “Judas! He’s the only one who still holds himself erect. Take care, Rabbi. He’s full of vigor, and unyielding. Speak to him gently, ingratiate yourself with him. Look, his obstinate skull is steaming with rage.”

“Well, then, to avoid getting bitten let’s catch this desert lion by sending a tame lion after him. Have we descended to this!” He raised his voice. “Judas, my brother, Time is a royal man-eating tiger. He is not satisfied with men: he also devours cities, kingdoms and (forgive me, God) even gods! But you he has not touched. Your rage has refused to boil away; no, you have never made your peace with the world. I still perceive the unyielding knife by your breast, and in your eyes hate, wrath and hope, the great fires of youth… Welcome!”

“Judas, can’t you hear?” murmured John, who had collapsed at Jesus’ feet. He was unrecognizable, with a white beard and two deep wounds on his cheeks and neck. “Can’t you hear, Judas? The master is greeting you. Greet him in return!”

“He’s pigheaded and obstinate like a mule,” said Peter. “He bites his lips to keep himself from talking.”

But Jesus had fixed his eyes on his old savage companion and was speaking to him sweetly. “Judas, the chattering messenger birds passed over the roof of my house and let fall the news, which then dropped into my yard. It seems you took to the mountains and made war against tyrants, both native and foreign. Then you went down to Jerusalem, seized the traitorous Sadducees, tied red ribbons around their necks and slaughtered them like lambs on the altar of the God of Israel. You’re a great, gloomy, desperate soul, Judas. Since the day we separated you haven’t seen a single day of gladness. Judas, my brother, I’ve missed you very much. Welcome!”

John’s terrified eyes regarded Judas, who was still biting his lips to prevent himself from speaking. “Dense smoke never ceases to curl up over his head,” he murmured, and he dragged himself back to the others.

“Take care, Rabbi,” said Peter. “He looks at you from every angle and weighs where he’s going to fall upon you first!”

“I’m speaking to you, Judas, my brother,” Jesus continued. “Can’t you hear? I greet you, but you don’t place your hand over your heart and say, ‘I’m glad to see you!’ Has Jerusalem’s suffering stricken you dumb? Do not bite your lips. You’re a man: bear up, don’t burst into lamentations. You did your duty bravely. The deep wounds in your arms, breast, face-all in front-proclaim that you fought like a lion. But what can a man do against God? Fighting to save Jerusalem, you were fighting against God. In his mind the holy city was reduced to ashes years ago.”

“Look, he’s come a step forward,” murmured Philip, frightened. “He’s sunk his head into his shoulders, like a bull. Now he’ll charge.”

“Let’s move to the sidelines, lads,” said Nathanael. “Now he’s raising his fist.”

“Rabbi, Rabbi, be careful!” called Martha and Mary, coming forward.

But Jesus tranquilly continued to speak. His lips, however, had begun to tremble just perceptibly.

“I too fought as well as I could, Judas, my brother. In my youth I set out, like a youth, to save the world. Afterward, when my mind had matured, I stepped into line-the line of men. I went to work: plowed the land, dug wells, planted vines and olives. I took the body of woman into my arms and created men-I conquered death. Isn’t that what I always said I would do? Well, I kept my word: I conquered death!”

Judas suddenly lashed out, pushed aside Peter and the women, who had placed themselves in front of him, and uttered a great, savage cry. “Traitor!”

They all turned to stone. Jesus grew pale and placed his hands on his breast.

“Me? Me, Judas?” he murmured. “You’ve uttered a grave word. Take it back!”

“Traitor! Deserter!”

The tiny old men turned yellow and started for the door. Thomas had already reached the street.

The two women jumped forward.

“Brothers, don’t leave,” Mary cried. “Satan has raised his hand against the rabbi. He’s going to strike him!”

Peter was slinking toward the door to escape. “Where are you going?” said Martha, grabbing him. “Will you deny him again-again?”

“I’m not getting mixed up in this,” said Philip. “Iscariot has a mighty arm, and I’m old. Let’s go, Nathanael.”

Judas and Jesus were now standing face to face. Judas’s body steamed. It smelled of sweat and putrescent wounds.

“Traitor! Deserter!” he bellowed again. “Your place was on the cross. That’s where the God of Israel put you to fight. But you got cold feet, and the moment death lifted its head, you couldn’t get away fast enough! You ran and hid yourself in the skirts of Martha and Mary. Coward! And you changed your face and your name, you fake Lazarus, to save yourself!”

“Judas Iscariot,” Peter interrupted at that point (the women had given him courage, “Judas Iscariot, is that the way one talks to the rabbi? Don’t you have any respect?”

“What rabbi?” howled Iscariot, brandishing his fist. “Him? But don’t you have eyes to see with, minds to judge with? Him, a rabbi? What did he tell us, what did he promise us? Where is the army of angels which was supposed to come down to save Israel? Where is the cross which was supposed to be our springboard to heaven? As he faced the cross this fake Messiah went dizzy and fainted. Then the ladies got hold of him and installed him to manufacture children for them. He says he fought, fought courageously. Yes, he swaggers about like the cock of the roost. But your post, deserter, was on the cross, and you know it. Others can reclaim barren lands and barren women. Your duty was to mount the cross-that’s what I say! You boast that you conquered death. Woe is you! Is that the way to conquer death-by making children, mouthfuls for Charon! Mouthfuls for Charon! That’s what a child is-a mouthful for Charon! You’ve turned yourself into his meat market and you deliver him morsels to eat. Traitor! Deserter! Coward!”

“Judas, my brother,” Jesus murmured, beginning now to tremble all over, “Judas, my brother, speak more affectionately.”

“You broke my heart, son of the Carpenter,” bellowed Judas, “how do you expect me to speak to you affectionately? Sometimes I want to scream and wail like a widow and bang my head against the rocks! Curse the day you were born, the day I was born, the hour I met you and you filled my heart with hopes! When you used to go in the lead and draw us along behind you and speak to us about heaven and earth, what joy that was, what freedom, what richness! The grapes seemed as big as twelve-year-old boys. With a single grain of wheat we were filled. One day we had five loaves of bread: we fed a crowd of thousands, and twelve basketfuls remained. And the stars: what splendor, what an outpouring of light in the sky! They weren’t stars; they were angels. No, they weren’t angels; they were us-us, your disciples, and we rose and set, and you were in the center, fixed like the north star, and we were all around you, dancing! You took me in your arms-do you remember?-and begged, ‘Betray me, betray me. I must be crucified and resurrected so that we can save the world!’ ”

Judas stopped for a moment and sighed. His wounds had reopened and begun to drain. The little old men, glued again one to the next, struggled with bowed heads to remember and to bring themselves back to life.

A tear popped into Judas’s eye. Crushing it angrily, he resumed his shouting. His heart was still not empty. “ ‘I am the lamb of God,’ you bleated. ‘I go to the slaughter so that I may save the world. Judas, my brother, do not be afraid. Death is the door to immortality. I must pass through this door. Help me!’ And I loved you so much, I trusted you so much, that I said, ‘Yes’ and went and betrayed you. But you… you…”

Foam gushed from his lips. Grasping Jesus by the shoulder, he shook him forcefully, glued him to the wall. He began again to bellow. “What business do you have here? Why weren’t you crucified? Coward! Deserter! Traitor! Was that all you accomplished? Have you no shame? I lift my fist and ask you: Why, why weren’t you crucified?”

“Quiet! Quiet!” Jesus begged. The blood began to run from his five wounds.

“Judas Iscariot,” Peter interrupted again, “have you no pity? Don’t you see his feet, his hands? Put your hand to his side if you don’t believe. It’s bleeding.”

Judas forced himself to laugh. Then he spat on the ground and shouted, “Eh, son of the Carpenter, you’re not putting anything over on me-no! Your guardian angel came during the night.”

Jesus shook. “My guardian angel…” he murmured with a shudder.

“Yes, your guardian angel: Satan. He stamped the red spots on your hands, feet and side so that you could deceive the world and deceived yourself. Why are you looking at me like that? Why don’t you answer? Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

Jesus closed his eyes. He felt faint but managed to keep himself on his feet. “Judas,” he said, his voice trembling, “you were always intractable and wild; you never accepted human limits. You forget that the soul of man is an arrow: it darts as high as it can toward heaven but always falls back down again to earth. Life on earth means shedding one’s wings.”

Hearing this, Judas became frantic. “Shame on you!” he screamed. “Is that what you’ve come to, you, the son of David, the son of God, the Messiah! Life on earth means: to eat bread and transform the bread into wings, to drink water and to transform the water into wings. Life on earth means: the sprouting of wings. That’s what you told us-you, traitor! They’re not my words, they’re yours. In case you forgot, I’m reminding you of them!”

“Where are you, Matthew, scribe? Come here! Open your weighty papers-you always carry them next to your heart, the same way I carry my knife. Open your writings. They’ve been devoured by time, moths and sweat, but quite a few words can still be seen. Open your writings, Matthew, and read so that the gentleman in question may hear and remember. One night an important notable of Jerusalem, Nicodemus by name, came to him secretly and asked, ‘Who are you? What is your work?’ And you, son of the Carpenter, you answered him-remember!-‘I forge wings!’ As you said that we all felt wings shoot out from our backs. And now what have you come to, you plucked cock! You whine away and say, ‘Life on earth means shedding one’s wings.’ Ugh! Out of my sight, coward! If life isn’t all lightning and thunder what do I want with it? Don’t come near me, Peter, you windmill; nor you, gallant Andrew. Don’t screech, women. I won’t bother him. Why lift my hand against him? He’s dead and buried. He still stands up on his feet, he talks, he weeps, but he’s dead: a carcass. Let God forgive him-God, because I cannot. May Israel’s blood, tears and ashes fall upon his head!”

The endurance of the tiny old men gave out and they all collapsed in one heap onto the ground. Their memories had been reawakened; they had begun to feel young again, to remember the kingdom of heaven, the thrones, the majesty. Suddenly they broke out into the dirge. Groaning and wailing, they beat their foreheads against the stones.

All at once Jesus too burst into sobs. He cried, “Judas, my brother, forgive me!” and started to rush into the redbeard’s arms. But Judas jumped back, put out his hands and would not let him come near. “Don’t touch me,” he shouted. “I don’t believe in anything any more; I don’t believe in anyone. You broke my heart!”

Jesus stumbled. He turned, searching for something to catch hold of. The women, fallen prone on the ground, were pulling out their hair and screaming; the disciples were looking up at him with anger and hatred. The Negro boy had disappeared.

“I am a traitor, a deserter, a coward,” he murmured. “Now I realize it: I’m lost! Yes, yes, I should have been crucified, but I lost courage and fled. Forgive me, brothers, I cheated you. Oh, if I could only relive my life from the beginning!”

He had collapsed to the ground while speaking and was now banging his head on the pebbles of the yard.

“Comrades, my old friends, say a kind word to me, comfort me. I perish, I am lost! I hold out my hand. Does no one of you rise to place his palm in mine or to say a kind word to me? No one? No one? Not even you, John, beloved? Not even you, Peter?”

“How can I speak, what is there to say?” wailed the beloved disciple. “What was the witchcraft you threw over us, son of Mary?”

“You deceived us,” said Peter, wiping away his tears. “Judas is right: you broke your word. Our lives have gone to waste.”

All at once from the pile of tiny old men there arose a unified whining din.

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

And Matthew lamented: “All my work gone for nothing, nothing, nothing! How masterfully I matched your words and deeds with the prophets! It was terribly difficult, but I managed. I used to say to myself that in the synagogues of the future the faithful would open thick tomes bound in gold and say, ‘The lesson for today is from the holy Gospel according to Matthew!’ This thought gave me wings, and I wrote. But now, all that grandeur has gone up in smoke, and you-you ingrate! you illiterate! you traitor!-you’re to blame. You should have been crucified. Yes, if only for my sake, so that these writings might have been saved, you should have been crucified!”

Once more the unified whining din arose from the heap of tiny old men.

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

At that moment Thomas rushed in from the doorway. “Rabbi,” he cried, “I won’t leave you now that everyone is abandoning you and calling you traitor! No, I won’t abandon you, not I, not Thomas the prophet. We said the Wheel turns. That’s why I won’t leave your side. I’m waiting for the Wheel to turn.”

Peter rose. “Let’s go!” he shouted. “Judas, step in front, lead us!”

Gasping, the tiny old men got up. Jesus was stretched out on the ground, face down, his arms spread wide. He filled the entire yard. They held their fists over him and shouted.

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

“Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”

One by one they shouted, “Coward! Deserter! Traitor!”-and vanished.

Jesus rotated his eyes with anguish, and looked. He was alone. The yard and house, the trees, the village doors, the village itself-all had disappeared. Nothing remained but stones beneath his feet, stones covered with blood; and lower, farther away, a crowd: thousands of heads in the darkness.

He tried with all his might to discover where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. He wanted to complete his cry, to shout LAMA SABACTHANI… He attempted to move his lips but could not. He grew dizzy and was ready to faint. He seemed to be hurling downward and perishing.

But suddenly, while he was falling and perishing, someone down on the ground must have pitied him, for a reed was held out in front of him, and he felt a sponge soaked in vinegar rest against his lips and nostrils. He breathed in deeply the bitter smell, revived, swelled his breast, looked at the heavens and uttered a heart-rending cry: LAMA SABACTHANI!

Then he immediately inclined his head, exhausted.

He felt terrible pains in his hands, feet and heart. His sight cleared, he saw the crown of thorns, the blood, the cross. Two golden earrings and two rows of sharp, brilliantly white teeth flashed in the darkened sun. He heard a cool, mocking laugh, and rings and teeth vanished. Jesus remained hanging in the air, alone.

His head quivered. Suddenly he remembered where he was, who he was and why he felt pain. A wild, indomitable joy took possession of him. No, no, he was not a coward, a deserter, a traitor. No, he was nailed to the cross. He had stood his ground honorably to the very end; he had kept his word. The moment he cried ELI ELI and fainted, Temptation had captured him for a split second and led him astray. The joys, marriages and children were lies; the decrepit, degraded old men who shouted coward, deserter, traitor at him were lies. All-all were illusions sent by the Devil. His disciples were alive and thriving. They had gone over sea and land and were proclaiming the Good News. Everything had turned out as it should, glory be to God!

He uttered a triumphant cry: IT IS ACCOMPLISHED!

And it was as though he had said: Everything has begun.