The Last Temptation of Christ

Chapter Two

HE SAT UP on the wood shavings and propped his back against the wall. A strap studded with two rows of sharp nails was hanging above his head. Every evening before he slept he lashed and bled his body so that he would remain tranquil during the night and not act insolently. A light tremor had seized him. He could not remember what temptations had come again in his sleep, but he felt that he had escaped a great danger. “I cannot bear any more; I’ve had enough,” he murmured, raising his eyes to heaven and sighing. The newborn light, uncertain and pale, slid through the cracks of the door and gave the soft yellow canework of the ceiling a strange, glazed sweetness, precious, like ivory. “I cannot bear any more; I’ve had enough,” he murmured again, clenching his teeth with indignation. He riveted his eyes upon the air, and suddenly his whole life passed before him: his father’s staff which had blossomed on the day of his engagement, then the lightning flash which struck the engaged man and paralyzed him; afterward how his mother stared at him, her own son, stared at him, saying nothing. But he heard her mute complaint-she was right! Night and day his sins were knives in his heart. He had fought in vain those last few years to vanquish Fear, the only one of the devils which remained. The others he had conquered: poverty, desire for women, the joys of youth, the happiness of the hearth. He had conquered them all-all except Fear. If only this might be conquered too, if only he were able… He was a man now: the hour had come.

“My father’s paralysis is my fault,” he murmured. “It’s my fault that Magdalene descended to prostitution; it’s my fault that Israel still groans under the yoke…”

A cock-it must have been from the adjoining house where his uncle the rabbi lived-beat its wings upon the roof and crowed repeatedly, angrily. It had obviously grown weary of the night, which had lasted far too long, and was calling the sun to appear at last.

The young man leaned against the wall and listened. The light struck the houses, doors opened, the streets came to life. Little by little the morning murmur rose from earth and trees, and slid out through the cracks in the houses: Nazareth was awakening. Suddenly there was a deep groan from the adjacent house, followed immediately by the rabbi’s savage yell. He was rousing God, reminding him of the promise he had made to Israel. “God of Israel, God of Israel, how long?” cried the rabbi, and the youth heard his knees strike crisply, hurriedly, against the floor boards.

He shook his head. “He’s praying,” he murmured; “he’s prostrating himself and calling on God. Now he will bang on the wall for me to start my prostrations.” He frowned angrily. “It’s bad enough I have to deal with God without also having to put up with men!” He knocked hard on the dividing wall with his fist to show the fierce rabbi that he was awake and praying.

He jumped to his feet. His patched and repatched tunic rolled off his shoulder and revealed his body-thin, sunburned, covered with red and black welts. Ashamed, he hastily gathered up the garment and wrapped it around his naked flesh.

The pale morning light came through the skylight and fell upon him, softly illuminating his face. All obstinacy, pride and affection… The fluff about his chin and cheeks had become a curly coal-black beard. His nose was hooked, his lips thick, and since they were slightly parted, his teeth gleamed brilliantly white in the light. It was not a beautiful face, but it had a hidden, disquieting charm. Were his eyelashes to blame? Thick and exceedingly long, they threw a strange blue shadow over the entire face. Or were his eyes responsible? They were large and black, full of light, full of darkness-all intimidation and sweetness. Flickering like those of a snake, they stared at you from between the long lashes, and your head reeled.

He shook out the shavings which had become tangled in his armpits and beard. His ear had caught the sound of heavy footsteps. They were approaching, and he recognized them. “It’s him; he’s coming again,” he groaned in disgust. “What does he want with me?” He crept toward the door to listen, but suddenly he stopped, terrified. Who had put the workbench behind the door and piled the cross and tools on it? Who? When? The night was full of evil spirits, full of dreams. We sleep, and they find the doors open, pass in and out at will and turn our houses and our brains upside down.

“Someone came last night in my sleep,” he murmured under his breath, as though he feared the visitor were still there and might overhear him. “Someone came. Surely it was God, God… or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle.” He shuddered. There were two paths. Which way should he go, which path should he choose?

The heavy steps continued to draw nearer. The young man looked around him anxiously. He seemed to be searching for a place to hide, to escape. He feared this man and did not want him to come, for deep within him was an old wound which would not close. Once when they were playing together as children, the other, who was three years older, had thrown him down and thrashed him. He picked himself up and did not speak, but he never went after that to play with the other children. He was ashamed, afraid. Curled up all alone in the yard of his house, he spun in his mind how one day he would wash away his shame, prove he was better than they were, surpass them all. And after so many years, the wound had never closed, had never ceased to run.

“Is he still pursuing me,” he murmured, “still? What does he want with me? I won’t let him in!”

A kick jarred the door. The young man darted forward. Summoning up all his strength, he removed the bench and opened the door. Standing on the threshold was a colossus with a curly red beard, open-shirted, barefooted, red-faced, sweating. Chewing an ear of grilled corn which he held in his hand, he swept his glance around the workshop, saw the cross leaning against the wall, and scowled. Then he extended his foot and entered.

Without saying a word he curled up in a corner, biting fiercely into the corn. The youth, still standing, kept his face averted from the other and looked outside through the open door at the narrow, untimely awakened street. Dust had not yet been stirred; the soil was damp and fragrant. The night dew and the light of the dawn dangled from the leaves of the olive tree opposite: the whole tree laughed. Enraptured, the young man breathed in the morning world.

But the redbeard turned. “Shut the door,” he growled. “I have something to say to you.”

The youth quivered when he heard the savage voice. He closed the door, sat down on the edge of the bench, and waited.

“I’ve come,” said the redbeard. “Everything is ready.”

He threw away the ear of corn. Raising his hard blue eyes, he pinned them on the youth and stretched forth his fat, much-wrinkled neck: “And what about you-are you ready too?”

The light had increased. The young man could now see the redbeard’s coarse, unstable face more clearly. It was not one, but two. When one half laughed the other threatened, when one half was in pain the other remained stiff and immobile; and even when both halves became reconciled for an instant, beneath the reconciliation you still felt that God and the devil were wrestling, irreconcilable.

The young man did not reply. The redbeard glanced at him furiously.

“Are you ready?” he asked again. He had already begun to get up in order to grab him by the arm and shake him awake so that he would give an answer, but before he could do so a trumpet blared and cavalry rushed into the narrow street, followed by the heavy, rhythmic march of Roman soldiers. The redbeard clenched his fist and raised it toward the ceiling.

“God of Israel,” he bellowed, “the time has come. Today! Not tomorrow, today!”

He turned again to the young man.

“Are you ready?” he asked once more, but then, without waiting for a reply: “No, no, you won’t bring the cross-that’s what I say! The people are assembled. Barabbas has come down from the mountains with his men. We’ll break into the prison and snatch away the Zealot. Then it will happen-don’t shake your head!-then the miracle will happen. Ask your uncle the rabbi. Yesterday he gathered all of us together in the synagogue-why didn’t your Highness come too? He stood up and spoke to us. ‘The Messiah won’t come,’ he said, ‘as long as we remain standing with crossed hands. God and men must fight together if the Messiah is to come.’ That’s what he told us, for your information. God isn’t enough, man isn’t enough. Both have to fight-together! Do you hear?”

He grasped the young man by the arm and shook him. “Do you hear? Where is your mind? You should have been there to listen to your uncle-maybe you would have come to your senses, poor devil! He said the Zealot-yes, the very Zealot the Roman infidels are going to crucify today-might be the One we’ve waited for over so many generations. If we leave him unaided, if we fail to rush out and save him, he will die without revealing who he is. But if we run and save him, the miracle will happen. What miracle? He will throw off his rags and the royal crown of David will shine on his head! That’s what he told us, for your information. When we heard him we all shed tears. The old rabbi lifted his hands to heaven and shouted, ‘Lord of Israel, today, not tomorrow, today!’ and we, every one of us, raised our hands, looked up at heaven and yelled, threatened, wept. ‘Today! Not tomorrow, today!’ Do you hear, son of the Carpenter, or am I talking to a blank wall?”

The young man, his half-closed eyes pinned on the strap with the sharp nails which hung on the wall opposite, was listening to something intently. Audible beneath the redbeard’s harsh and menacing voice were the hoarse, muffled struggles of his old father in the next room as he vainly opened and closed his lips, trying to speak. The two voices joined in the young man’s heart, and suddenly he felt that all the struggle of mankind was a mockery.

The redbeard gripped him on the shoulder now and gave him a push.

“Where is your mind, clairvoyant? Didn’t you hear what your uncle Simeon told us?”

“The Messiah will not come in this way,” murmured the young man. His eyes were pinned now on the newly constructed cross, bathed in the soft rosy light of the dawn. “No, the Messiah will not come in this way. He will never renounce his rags or wear a royal crown. Neither men nor God will ever rush to save him, because he cannot be saved. He will die, die, wearing his rags; and everyone-even the most faithful-will abandon him. He will die all alone at the top of a barren mountain, wearing on his head a crown of thorns.”

The redbeard turned and gazed at him with astonishment. Half his face glittered, the other half remained completely dark. “How do you know?” he asked. “Who told you?”

But the young man did not answer. It was fully light out now. He jumped off the bench, seized a handful of nails and a hammer, and approached the cross. But the redbeard anticipated him. Reaching the cross with one great stride, he began to punch it rabidly and to spit on it as though it were a man. He turned. His beard, mustache and eyebrows pricked the young man’s face.

“Aren’t you ashamed?” he shouted. “All the carpenters in Nazareth, Cana and Capernaum refused to make a cross for the Zealot, and you- You’re not ashamed, not afraid? Suppose the Messiah comes and finds you building his cross; suppose this Zealot, the one who’s being crucified today, is the Messiah… Why didn’t you have the courage like the others to answer the centurion: ‘I don’t build crosses for Israel’s heroes’?”

He seized the absent-minded carpenter by the shoulder. “Why don’t you answer? What are you staring at?”

Lashing out, he glued him to the wall. “You’re a coward,” he flung at him with scorn, “a coward, a coward-that’s what I say! Your whole life will add up to nothing!”

A shrill voice tore through the air. Abandoning the youth, the redbeard turned his face toward the door and listened. There was a great uproar outside: men and women, an immense crowd, cries of: Town crier! Town crier! and then once more the shrill voice invaded the air.

“Sons and daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, by imperial command: attention! Close your workshops and taverns, do not go to your fields. Mothers, take your babies; old men, take your staffs-and come! Come, you who are lame, deaf, paralyzed-come to see, to see how those who lift their hands against our master the Emperor-long may he live!-are punished; to see how this villainous rebel, the Zealot, will die!”

The redbeard opened the door, saw the agitated crowd which was now silent and listening, saw the town crier upon a rock-skinny, hatless, with his long neck and long spindly legs-and spat. “Damn you to hell, traitor!” he bellowed. Slamming the door furiously, he turned to the young man. His choler had risen clear to his eyes.

“You can be proud of your brother Simon the traitor!” he growled.

“It’s not his fault,” said the youth contritely; “it’s mine, mine.”

He paused a moment, and then: “It was because of me that my mother banished him from the house, because of me-and now he…”

Half the redbeard’s face sweetened and was illuminated for an instant as though it sympathized with the youth. “How will you ever pay for all those sins, poor devil?” he asked.

The young man remained silent for a long time. His lips moved, but he was tongue-tied. “With my life, Judas, my brother,” he finally managed to say. “I have nothing else.”

The redbeard gave a start. The light had now entered the workshop through the skylight and the slits of the door. The youth’s large, pitch-black eyes gleamed; his voice was full of bitterness and fear.

“With your life?” said the redbeard, taking hold of the other’s chin. “Don’t turn your head away from me. You’re a man now, look into my eyes… With your life? What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

He lowered his head and was silent. But suddenly: “Don’t ask me, don’t ask me, Judas, my brother!”

Judas clasped the young man’s face between his palms. He raised it and looked at it for a long time without speaking. Then, tranquilly, he let it go and moved toward the door. His heart had suddenly been roused.

The din outside was growing stronger and stronger. The rustle of naked feet and the flapping of sandals rose into the air, which jingled with the bronze bracelets and thick ankle rings of the women. Standing erect on the threshold, the redbeard watched the crowds that continually poured out of the alleyways. Everyone was mounting toward the opposite end of the village, toward the accursed hill where the crucifixion was to take place. The men did not speak; they cursed between their teeth and beat their staffs against the cobbles. Some of them secretly held knives in their fists, beneath their shirts. The women were screeching. Many had thrown back their kerchiefs, undone their hair and begun to chant the dirge.

The head ram of this flock was Simeon the old rabbi of Nazareth -shrunken, bent over with the years, warped and contorted by the evil disease, tuberculosis: a scaffolding of dry bones which his indestructible soul held together and kept from collapsing. The two skeleton hands with their monstrous, birdlike talons squeezed the sacerdotal crosier with the pair of entwined snakes at its top and banged it down on the stones. This living corpse smelled like a burning city. Seeing the flames within his eyes, you felt that flesh, bones and hair-the whole ramshackle body-were afire; and when he opened his mouth and shouted, God of Israel! smoke rose from the top of his head. Behind him filed the stooping, large-boned elders with their staffs, bushy eyebrows and forked beards; behind them the able-bodied men, then the women. Bringing up the rear were the children, each with a stone in hand, and some with slings over their shoulders. They all advanced together, rumbling softly, mutely, like the sea.

As Judas leaned against the doorpost and watched the men and women, his heart swelled. They are the ones, he reflected, the blood rushing to his head, they are the ones who together with God will perform the miracle. Today! Not tomorrow, today!

An immense, high-rumped manlike woman broke away from the crowd. She was fierce and maniacal, and the clothes were falling off her shoulders. Bending down, she grabbed a stone and slung it forcefully at the carpenter’s door.

“Damn you to hell, cross-maker!” she cried.

All at once shouts and curses rang out from one end of the street to the other and the children took the slings from their shoulders. The redbeard shut the door with a bang.

“Cross-maker! Cross-maker!” was hooted on all sides, and the door rumbled under a barrage of stones.

The young man, kneeling before the cross, swung the hammer up and down and nailed, banging hard, as though he wished to drown out the hoots and curses of the street. His breast was boiling; sparks jumped across the bridge of his nose. He banged frantically, and the sweat ran down his forehead.

The redbeard knelt, seized his arm and snatched the hammer violently out of his grasp. He gave the cross a blow which knocked it to the floor.

“Are you going to bring it?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not ashamed?”

“No.”

“I won’t let you. I’ll smash it to smithereens.”

He looked around and put out his arm to find an adze.

“Judas, Judas, my brother,” said the young man slowly, beseechingly, “do not step in my way.” His voice had suddenly deepened; it was dark, unrecognizable. The redbeard was troubled.

“What way?” he asked quietly. He waited, gazing anxiously at the young man. The light now fell directly on the carpenter’s face and on his bare, small-boned torso. His lips were twisted, clenched tight as though struggling to restrain a great cry. The redbeard saw how emaciated he was, how pale, and his misanthropic heart felt pity for him. He was melting away; each day his cheeks sank more. How long was it since he had last seen him? Only a few days. He had left to make his rounds of the villages near Gennesaret. A blacksmith, he beat and fashioned the iron, shod horses, made pickaxes, ploughshares and sickles, but then hurried back to Nazareth because he had received a message that the Zealot was to be crucified. He recalled how he had left his old friend, and now, look how he had found him! How swollen the eyes had become, how sunken the temples! And what was that bitterness all around his mouth?

“What happened to you?” he asked. “Why have you melted away? Who is tormenting you?”

The young man laughed feebly. He was about to reply that it was God, but he restrained himself. This was the great cry within him, and he did not want to let it escape his lips.

“I am wrestling,” he answered.

“With whom?”

“‘I don’t know. I’m wrestling.”

The redbeard plunged his eyes into those of the youth. He questioned them, implored them, threatened, but the pitch-black inconsolable eyes, full of fear, did not answer.

Suddenly Judas’s mind reeled. As he bent over the dark, unspeaking eyes it seemed to him that he saw trees in bloom, blue water, crowds of men; and inside, deep down in the gleaming pupil, behind the flowering trees and the water and the men, and occupying the entire iris, a large black cross.

He jumped erect, his eyes popping out of his head. He wanted to speak, to ask, Can you be… You? But his lips had frozen. He wanted to clasp the young man to his breast to kiss him, but his arms, stretched in the air, had suddenly stiffened, like wood.

And then, as the youth saw him with his arms spread wide, his eyes protruding, his hair standing on end, he uttered a cry. The terrifying nightmare bounded out of the trapdoor of his mind-the entire rout of dwarfs with their implements of crucifixion and the cries: After him, lads! And now too he recognized their captain the redbeard: it was Judas, Judas the blacksmith, who had rushed in the lead, laughing wildly.

The redbeard’s lips moved. “Can you be… you…?” he stammered.

“I? Who?”

The other did not answer. Chewing his mustache, he looked at him, half of his face again brilliantly illuminated, the other half plunged in darkness. Jostling in his mind were the signs and prodigies which had surrounded this youth from his birth, and even before: how, when the marriage candidates were assembled, the staff of Joseph-among so many others-was the only one to blossom. Because of this the rabbi awarded him Mary, exquisite Mary, who was consecrated to God. And then how a thunderbolt struck and paralyzed the bridegroom on his marriage day, before he could touch his bride. And how later, it was said, the bride smelled a white lily and conceived a son in her womb. And how the night before his birth she dreamed that the heavens opened, angels descended, lined up like birds on the humble roof of her house, built nests and began to sing; and some guarded her threshold, some entered her room, lighted a fire and heated water to bathe the expected infant, and some boiled broth for the confined woman to drink…

The redbeard approached slowly, hesitantly, and bent over the young man. His voice was now full of longing, entreaty, and fear. “Can you be… you…?” he asked once more, but again he dared not complete the question.

The youth quivered with fright. “Me?” he said, sniggering sarcastically. “But don’t you see me? I’m not capable of speaking. I haven’t the courage to go to the synagogue. As soon as I see men I run away. I shamelessly disobey God’s commandments. I work on the Sabbath…”

He picked up the cross, stood it straight again and seized his hammer.

“And now, look! I make crosses and crucify!” Once more he struggled to laugh.

The redbeard was vexed and did not speak. He opened the door. A new swarm of tumultuous villagers appeared at the end of the street-old ladies with disheveled hair, sickly old men; the lame, the blind, the leprous-all the dregs of Nazareth. They too were mounting, short of breath; they too were crawling toward the hill of crucifixion… The appointed hour drew near. It’s time for me to leave and join the people, the redbeard reflected, time for us to rush forward all together and snatch away the Zealot. Then it will become clear whether or not he is the Saviour… But he hesitated. Suddenly a cool breeze passed over him. No, he thought, this man who is to be crucified today will not be the One the Hebrew race has awaited for so many centuries. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! Tomorrow! How many years, God of Abraham, have you kept pounding us with this tomorrow! tomorrow! tomorrow! All right-when? We’re human; we’ve stood enough!

He had become ferocious. Throwing a wrathful glance at the young man who lay prone on the cross, nailing, he asked himself with a shudder, Can he be the One, can he be the One-the cross-maker? God’s ways are obscure and indirect… Can he be the One?

Behind the old women and the cripples, the soldiers of the Roman patrol now appeared with their shields, spears, and helmets of bronze. Indifferent and silent, they herded the flock of men, looking down on the Hebrews with disdain.

The redbeard eyed them savagely, his blood boiling. He turned to the youth. He did not want to see him any more: everything seemed to be his fault.

“I’m leaving!” he cried, clenching his fist. “You-you do what you like, cross-maker! You’re a coward, a good-for-nothing traitor like your brother the town crier! But God will throw fire on you just as he threw it on your father, and burn you up. That’s what I say-and let it be something for you to remember me by!”