The Last Temptation of Christ

Chapter Four

THE MOTHER MARCHED and marched, hurrying to slide in among the crowd and disappear. She heard the screeching of the women in front; behind them were the panting, exasperated men, barefooted, with uncombed hair and unwashed bodies, their daggers thrust deep down under their shirts. The old men followed, and still farther back came the lame, the blind and the maimed. The earth crumbled under the people’s feet, the dust flew up in clouds, the air reeked. Above, the sun had already begun to burn furiously.

An old woman looked around, saw Mary, and cursed. Two neighbors turned away their faces and spit in order to exorcise the ill omen; shuddering, a newly married girl gathered together her skirts lest the mother of the cross-maker touch them as she passed. Mary sighed and enclosed herself securely in her violet kerchief, leaving visible only her reproachful almond-shaped eyes and her closed, bitter mouth. Stumbling over the rocks, she proceeded all alone, hurrying to hide, to disappear within the crowd. Whispers broke forth all around her, but she fortified her heart and proceeded. What has my son descended to, she was thinking, my son, my son, my darling!… She proceeded, biting the edge of her kerchief to keep herself. from bursting into tears.

She reached the mass of people, left the men behind her, slid in among the women and hid herself. She had placed her palm over her mouth-only her eyes were visible now. None of my neighbors will recognize me, she said to herself, and she grew calm.

Suddenly there was a great din behind her. The men had gathered momentum; they were pushing their way through the mass of women in order to take the lead. The barracks where the Zealot was imprisoned were close by now, and they were impatient to smash down the door and free the captive. Mary stepped to one side, concealed herself in a well-hidden doorway, and looked: long greasy beards, long greasy hair, frothing mouths; and the rabbi, mounted on the shoulders of a giant with a savage expression, waving his arms toward heaven and shouting. Shouting what? Mary cocked her ear, and heard.

“My children, have faith in the people of Israel. Forward-all together. Do not be afraid. Rome is smoke. God will puff and blow her away! Remember the Maccabees, remember how they expelled the Greeks, the rulers of the whole world, how they put them to shame! In the same way we shall expel the Romans, we shall put them to shame. There is only one Lord of Hosts, and he is our God!”

Swept away in a divine ecstasy, the old rabbi jumped and danced upon the giant’s broad shoulders. He had grown old, devoured by fasts, prostrations and great hopes, and had no strength to run. The huge-bodied mountaineer had grabbed him and was running with him now in front of the people, waving him back and forth like a banner.

“Hey, you’ll drop him, Barabbas,” the people shouted.

But Barabbas advanced without the slightest worry, tossing and dandling the old man on his shoulders.

The people were crying for God. The air above their heads caught fire, flames bounded forth and joined heaven to earth. Their minds reeled: this world of stones, grass and flesh thinned out, became transparent, and the next world appeared behind it, composed of flames and angels.

Judas caught fire. Thrusting forward his arms, he snatched the old rabbi from Barabbas’s shoulders, threw him astride his own and began to bellow: “Today! Not tomorrow, today!” The rabbi ignited in his turn and began to sing the psalm of victory in his high voice, the voice of a man with one foot in the grave. In a moment, the entire people intoned:

The nations compassed me about; in the name of my

God I disperse them!

The nations girded me round; in the name of my

God I disperse them!

They encircled me like wasps; in the name of my

God I disperse them!

But while they sang, scattering the nations in their minds, the enemy fortress suddenly loomed before them in the heart of Nazareth: square, stoutly built, with four corners, four towers, four enormous bronze eagles. The devil inhabited every inch of these barracks. At the very top, above the towers, were the yellow and black eagle-bearing Roman standards; below these, Rufus, the bloodthirsty centurion of Nazareth, with his army; still lower, the horses, dogs, camels and slaves; and lower yet, thrust in a deep, dried-out well, his hair untouched by shears, his lips by wine, his body by women-the Zealot. This rebel would but toss his head, and men, slaves, horses, towers-all the accursed levels above him-would come tumbling down. God always works in this way. Deep in the foundations of wrong he buries the small despised cry of justice.

This Zealot was the last of the long lineage of the Maccabees. The God of Israel had held his hand over his head and kept the sacred seed from perishing. One night Herod the aged king of Judea-a wicked, damnable traitor!-had smeared forty adolescents with tar and ignited them as torches because they had pulled down the golden eagle he had fastened to the previously unsoiled lintel of the Temple. Of the forty-one conspirators, forty were caught, but the leader escaped. The God of Israel had seized him by the hair of his head and saved him, and this was this Zealot, the great-great-grandson of the Maccabees, a handsome adolescent at the time, with cheeks still covered with fuzz.

For years after that he roamed the mountains, fighting to liberate the holy soil which God had presented to Israel. “We have only one master-Adonai,” he used to proclaim. “Do not pay poll tax to the earthly magistrates, do not suffer their eagle-shaped idols to soil God’s Temple, do not slaughter oxen and sheep as sacrifices for the tyrant emperor! There is one God, our God; there is one people, the people of Israel; there is but one fruit on the entire tree of the earth-the Messiah.”

But suddenly the God of Israel drew his hand away from him and he was captured by Rufus, the centurion of Nazareth. Peasants, workers and proprietors had set out en masse from all the near-by villages; fishermen had come from the lake of Gennesaret. For days and days now an obscure, cross-eyed, doubled-sensed message had been leaping from house to house, fishing boat to fishing boat, and also catching passers-by on the road: “They’re crucifying the Zealot; he’s done for too-finished!” But at other times the message was: “Greetings, brothers, the Saviour has come! Take large date branches and forward, all together-march to Nazareth to welcome him!”

The old rabbi stood on his knees atop the redbeard’s shoulders, pointed to the barracks and began once more to shout: “He’s come! He’s come! Standing in that dried-out well is the Messiah-erect and waiting. Waiting for whom? For us, the people of Israel! Onward, smash down the door, deliver the Deliverer, that he may deliver us!”

“In the name of the God of Israel!” Barabbas cried in a wild voice, and he raised the hatchet he held in his hand.

The people bellowed, daggers stirred under their shirts, the children loaded their slings and everyone-Barabbas in the lead-charged the iron door. But all eyes had been blinded by the great light of God, and no one saw a tiny, squat door in the barracks which opened just a crack, revealing Magdalene, as pale as death and wiping her tear-filled eyes. Her soul had pitied the condemned man and she had gone down to the pit during the night to give him the ultimate joy, the sweetest which this world can offer. But he was of the wild battalion of the Zealots and had sworn that until the deliverance of Israel he would neither cut his hair, put wine to his lips, nor sleep with woman. Magdalene sat opposite him the whole night and looked at him; but his eyes were on Jerusalem, far far in the distance behind the woman’s black hair, not the subjected and prostituted Jerusalem of that day, but the holy Jerusalem of the future, with its seven triumphant fortress gates, its seven guardian angels and the seventy-seven peoples of the earth prostrate at its feet. As the condemned man touched the cool breast of the future Jerusalem, death vanished and the world about him sweetened, grew circular, filled his grasp. He closed his eyes, held the breast of Jerusalem in his palm and thought of one thing only-of the God of Israel, the God whose hair had never been touched by shears, whose lips had never been touched by wine, whose body had never been touched by woman. The Zealot held Jerusalem on his knees all night long and constructed the kingdom of heaven deep down in his bowels, not out of angels and clouds, but as he wanted it, warm in winter, cool in summer, and made of men and soil.

The old rabbi saw his disreputable daughter emerge from the barracks. He turned his face the other way. This was the one great humiliation of his life. How had this prostitute issued from his chaste, god-fearing bowels? What devil or what incurable pangs had hit her to make her go the way of shame? One day, after she returned from a festival in Cana, she wept and declared she wished to kill herself, and afterward she burst into fits of laughter, painted her cheeks, donned all her jewelry and began to walk the streets. Then she left the paternal roof and set up shop in Magdala-at the crossroads, where all the caravans passed by…

With her bodice still undone, she advanced fearlessly toward the crowd. The rouge on her lips and cheeks had been washed away; her eyes were cloudy and dull from having watched the man all night long and wept. When she saw her mortified father look the other way she smiled bitterly. She had already left shame far behind her, as well as fear of God, love of her father and care about the opinions of men. Scandal had it that she was possessed with seven devils, but her heart did not contain seven devils; it contained seven knives.

The old rabbi began to shout again. He wanted the people to turn and look directly at him so that they would fail to see his daughter. God saw her, and that was enough-he would judge.

“Open the eyes of the soul and regard the heavens,” he cried, pivoting on the redbeard’s shoulders. “God stands above us. The heavens have opened, the armies of angels have come forth, the air has filled with red and blue wings!”

The sky turned to flame. The people raised their eyes, looked above them and saw God-armed and descending. Barabbas lifted his hatchet. “Today! Not tomorrow, today!” he screamed, and the mob charged the barracks. They fell upon the iron door, applied crowbars, put ladders against the walls, brought flaming brands to set the place afire. But suddenly the iron door opened and two bronze cavalrymen appeared. They were armed to the teeth, sunburned, well nourished, sure of themselves. With fixed expressions, they spurred their horses, lifted their lances-and all at once the streets filled with howling feet and backs which had begun to flee toward the hill of crucifixion.

This accursed hill was bare: nothing but flint and thorns. You found dried drops of blood under whatever stone you happened to lift. Every time the Hebrews raised their hands against the Romans in order to seek freedom this hill filled with crosses, and upon these the rebels writhed and groaned. At night the jackals came and ate their feet, and the next morning the crows flew down and ate their eyes.

The people halted at the foot of the hill, gasping for breath. More bronze cavalrymen overwhelmed them, rode up and down, crowded the mass of Hebrews together into one area, then formed a cordon around them. It was almost noon now and the cross had still not come. At the top of the hill two gypsies waited, holding the hammers and nails in their hands. The village dogs arrived, anxious to eat. The faces of the people were on fire, turned up toward the hill, under the torrid sky. Pitch-black eyes, hooked noses, sunken sun-baked cheeks, greasy sideburns. The fat women, their armpits drenched, their hair splattered with drippings, melted away under the sun, and reeked.

From the lake of Gennesaret a group of fishermen, their childlike eyes wide with wonder, had come like the others to see the miracle: as the unlawful pagans led the Zealot to be crucified, he was going to throw off his rags, and an angel would then bound forth from underneath, scimitar in hand… Their faces, chests and arms corroded by sun and wind, the men had arrived the night before with their baskets chockful of fish. After selling these for their full value and then some, they settled down in a tavern where they got drunk, forgot why they had brought themselves to Nazareth, remembered Woman and sang her glory, then began fighting among themselves, became friends again, and at daybreak suddenly recalled the God of Israel, washed, and set out, half awake, half asleep, to see the miracle.

They had waited and waited, and soon grown weary. A lance blow on the back was all that was needed to make them strongly regret they had come.

“I say we should return to our boats, lads,” said one with a curly gray beard. He was well preserved and vigorous for his age, and had a forehead like an oyster shell. “The Zealot will be crucified like the rest, and mark my words, the heavens won’t open. There’s no end to God’s anger, or to the injustice of men. What do you say, son of Zebedee?”

“I say there’s no end to Peter’s foolishness,” laughed his companion, a wild-eyed fisherman with a thorny beard. “Forgive me, Peter, but you haven’t developed good sense to match your white hairs. You flare up in a flash and burn out just as quickly, like kindling. Wasn’t it you who roused us to come here in the first place? You ran like a madman from boat to boat and shouted, ‘Drop everything, brothers; a man sees a miracle only once in his life. Come on, let’s go to Nazareth to see the miracle!’ And now you’re smacked once or twice on the back with a lance, and right away your mind turns upside down, you change your tune and shout, ‘Drop everything, brothers; let’s go home!’ You’re not called ‘Weathercock’ for nothing!”

Two or three fishermen heard this conversation and laughed; a shepherd who smelled of goats lifted his staff and said, “Don’t scold him, Jacob, even if he is a weathercock. He’s the best of all of us, and has a heart of gold.”

“You’re right, Philip-a heart of gold,” they all agreed, and they extended their hands to caress and pacify Peter, who was puffing with rage. They can say what they like, he was thinking, whatever they like-short of calling me Weathercock. Maybe I am one, maybe I’m prey to every breeze that blows, but it’s not out of fear; no, it’s because of my good heart.

Jacob saw Peter’s sullen expression and felt distressed. He regretted having spoken so hastily to the older man and asked, in order to change the subject, “Peter, how’s your brother Andrew? Still in the Jordan desert?”

“Yes, still there,” Peter answered with a sigh. “They say he’s been baptized already and eats locusts and wild honey, the same as his teacher. May God prove me a liar, but I wager we’ll soon see him making the rounds of the villages and screaming ‘Repent! Repent! The Kingdom of Heaven has come!’ like all the rest. What kingdom of heaven-this around us? Have we no shame, I ask you!”

Jacob shook his head and knit his thick brows. “I’ve seen the same thing happen to that know-all brother of mine John,” he said. “He went to become a monk at the monastery in the desert of Gennesaret. It seems he wasn’t made out to be a fisherman, so he left me all alone with two old graybeards and five boats, to bang my head against the wall.”

“But what did the blessed fellow lack?” asked Philip, the shepherd. “He had every gift God could give! What came over him just at the flower of his youth?” He asked, but inside him he rejoiced secretly that rich men also had a worm which devoured them.

“He grew uneasy all of a sudden,” Jacob answered, “and he began to toss and turn all night long on his bed like a youngster in need of a woman.”

“Why didn’t he get married? There were brides for the asking.”

“He said he didn’t want to marry a woman.”

“What, then?”

“The kingdom of heaven for him-just like Andrew.”

The men burst out laughing.

“And may they live happily ever after!” shouted an old fisherman, rubbing his calloused hands together mischievously.

Peter opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, hoarse cries filled the air: “Look! The cross-maker, the cross-maker!”

Simultaneously, they turned their bewildered heads. Down the road the son of the carpenter could be seen mounting on unsteady feet, and panting under the weight of the cross.

“The cross-maker! The cross-maker!” roared the crowd. “The traitor!”

The two gypsies looked down from the top of the hill. When they saw the cross approaching they jumped with joy: the sun had been roasting them. Spitting into their palms, they took their pickaxes and began to dig a pit. The thick, flat-headed nails they placed on a near-by stone. Three had been ordered; they had forged five.

Men and women had joined hands and formed a chain in order to block the cross-maker’s passage. Magdalene broke away from the crowd and pinned her eyes on the son of Mary, who was mounting. Her heart swelled with distress as she recalled the games they used to play together when they were still small children, he three years old, she four. What deep, unrevealable joy they had experienced, what unspeakable sweetness! For the first time they had both sensed the deep dark fact that one was a man and the other a woman: two bodies which seemed once upon a time to have been one; but some merciless God separated them, and now the pieces had found each other again and were trying to join, to reunite. The older they grew, the more clearly they felt what a miracle it was that one should be a man and the other a woman, and they looked at each other in mute terror, waiting like two wild beasts for the hunger to increase and the hour to come when they would flow one into the other and rejoin that which God had sundered. But then, one evening at a festival in Cana when her beloved held out his hand to give her the rose and seal their engagement, merciless God had rushed down upon them and separated them once more. And ever since then…

Magdalene’s eyes filled with tears. She stepped forward. The cross-bearer was passing directly before her.

She leaned over him. Her scented hair touched his naked, bloody shoulders.

“Cross-maker!” she growled in a hoarse, strangulated voice. She was trembling.

The youth turned and riveted his large afflicted eyes upon her for a split second. Convulsive spasms played about his lips. His mouth was contorted, but he lowered his head immediately, and Magdalene did not have time to distinguish whether the contortion was from pain, fear, or a smile.

Still leaning over him, she spoke, gasping for breath. “Have you no pride? Don’t you remember? How can you lower yourself to this!”

And after a moment, as though she had heard his voice give her an answer, she shouted, “No, no, poor wretch, it isn’t God; it’s the devil!”

The crowd meanwhile had darted forward to block his path. An old man lifted his stick and struck him; two cowherds who had dashed down from Mount Tabor to join the others at the miracle nailed him in place with their goads. Barabbas felt the hatchet go up and down in his fist. But as soon as the old rabbi saw the danger, he slid off the redbeard’s neck and ran to his nephew’s defense.

“Stop, my children,” he screamed. “It’s a great sin to block God’s path, do not do it. What is ordained must come to pass. Do not step in the way. Let the cross through-it is sent by God; let the gypsies make ready their nails, let Adonai’s apostle mount the cross. Do not be afraid; have faith! God’s law is such that the knife must reach clear to the bone. Otherwise no miracle will take place! Listen to your old rabbi, my children. I’m telling you the truth. Man cannot sprout wings unless he has first reached the brink of the abyss!”

The cowherds withdrew their goads, stones fell from clenched fists, the people stepped aside to clear God’s path, and the son of Mary stumbled onward, the cross upon his back. The grasshoppers could be heard sawing the air in the olive grove beyond; a hungry butcher’s dog barked happily on top of the hill. Farther on, within the mass of people, a woman wrapped in a violet kerchief cried out and fainted.

Peter now stood with gaping mouth and protruding eyes. He was watching the son of Mary. He knew him. Mary’s family home in Cana was opposite his own, and her aged parents, Joachim and Anne, were old bosom friends of Peter’s parents. They were saintly people. The angels went regularly in and out of their simple cottage, and one night the neighbors saw God Himself stride across their threshold disguised as a beggar. They knew it was God, because the house shook as though invaded by an earthquake, and nine months later the miracle happened: Anne, an old woman in her sixties, gave birth to Mary. Peter must have been less than five years old at the time, but he remembered well all the celebrations which followed, how the whole village was set in motion, how men and women ran to offer their congratulations, some carrying flour and milk, others dates and honey, others tiny infant’s clothing: presents for the confined woman and her child. Peter’s mother had been the midwife. She had heated water, thrown in salt, and bathed the wailing newborn. And now, here was Mary’s son passing in front of him loaded down with the cross, while everyone spat on him and pelted him with stones. As Peter looked and looked, he felt his heart become roused. His was an unlucky fate. The God of Israel had mercilessly chosen him, the son of Mary, to build crosses so that the prophets could be crucified. He is omnipotent, Peter reflected with a shudder; he might have picked me to do the same, but he chose the son of Mary instead and I escaped… Suddenly Peter’s roused heart grew calm, and all at once he felt deeply grateful to the son of Mary, who had taken the sin and lifted it to his shoulders.

Just as all this was jostling in his mind, the cross-bearer halted, out of breath.

“I’m tired, tired,” he murmured. He looked around him to find a stone or a man he could lean against, but saw nothing except lifted fists and thousands of eyes staring at him with hatred. Then he heard what seemed to him wings in the sky, and his heart leaped up. Perhaps God had taken pity on him at the very last moment and dispatched his angels. He raised his eyes. Yes, there were wings above him: crows! He grew angry. Obstinacy took possession of him and he resolutely lifted his foot in order to continue walking and mount the hill. But the stones sank away from under his sole. He tripped, began to fall forward. Peter rushed out in time to hold him up. Taking the cross from him, he lifted it to his own shoulder.

“Let me help you,” he said. “You’re tired.”

The son of Mary turned and gazed at the fisherman but did not recognize him. This entire journey seemed to him a dream. His shoulders had suddenly been unburdened and now he was flying in the air, just as one flies in one’s dreams. It couldn’t have been a cross, he thought; it must have been a pair of wings! Sponging the sweat and blood from his face, he followed behind Peter with sure steps.

The air was a fire which licked the stones. The sheep dogs which the gypsies had brought to lap up the blood stretched their well-fed bodies out at the foot of a rock, by the edge of the pit their masters had dug. They were panting, and sweat poured from their dangling tongues. You could hear the drumming of the people’s heads in this blast furnace, the bubbling of their brains. In such heat all frontiers shifted-good sense and foolishness, cross and wings, God and man: all were transposed.

Several tenderhearted women revived Mary. She opened her eyes and saw her barefooted, emaciated son. He was at last about to reach the summit, and in front of him was another man carrying the cross. Sighing, she turned around as though seeking help. When she saw her fellow villagers and the fishermen she started to go near in order to lean against them-but too late! The trumpet blared at the barracks, more cavalrymen emerged, clouds of dust flew up, the people crowded together again, and before Mary had time to step up onto a rock in order to see, the cavalrymen were on top of them, with their bronze helmets, their red cloaks, and the proud, well-nourished horses which trampled the Jewry under foot.

The rebel Zealot came forward, his arms tied in back of him at the elbows, his clothes torn and bloody, his long hair pasted to his shoulders by blood and sweat, his gray thorny beard immense, his motionless eyes staring directly in front of him.

The people were terrified at the sight. Was this a man, or hidden deep within his rags was there an angel or a devil whose compressed lips guarded a terrible and unconfessable secret? The old rabbi and the people had agreed that in order to give the Zealot courage, as soon as he appeared they would join all together in singing at the top of their voices the psalm of war: “Let my enemies be scattered.” But now the words stuck in their throats. Everyone felt that this man had no need of courage. He was above courage: unconquerable, insuppressible-and freedom was enclosed in those hands fettered behind his back. They all looked at him in terror and remained silent.

Riding in front of the rebel and pulling him along with a cord attached to the rear of his saddle was the centurion, his skin baked hard by the oriental sun. He had long ago begun to detest the Jews. For ten years he had put up crosses and crucified them, for ten years he had stuffed their mouths with stones and dirt to silence them-but in vain! As soon as one was crucified a thousand more lined up and anxiously awaited their turn, chanting the brazen psalms of one of their ancient kings. They had no fear of death. They had their own bloodthirsty God who lapped up the blood of the first-born male children, they had their own law, a man-eating beast with ten horns. Where could he catch hold of them? How could he subjugate them? They had no fear of death, and whoever has no fear of death-the centurion had often meditated on this here in the East-whoever has no fear of death is immortal.

He drew back on the reins, stopped his horse and swept his eyes over the Jewry: eroded faces, inflamed eyes, soiled beards, greasy mops of hair. He spat with disgust. If he could only leave, leave! If he could only return once more to Rome with its many baths, its theaters, amphitheaters and well-washed women! He detested the East-its smells, its filth, its Jews!

The gypsies were shaking their sweat onto the stones. They had set the cross into its hole at the top of the hill. The son of Mary sat on a rock and looked at them, looked at the cross, the people, at the centurion who dismounted in front of the crowd; looked and looked, but saw nothing except an ocean of skulls beneath a fiery sky. Peter approached and leaned over to speak to him. He spoke, but a stormy white-capped sea was beating against the youth’s ears, and he did not hear.

At a nod from the centurion the Zealot was released. He drew tranquilly to one side in order to recover from his numbness, and then began to undress. Magdalene slid between the legs of the horses and started to approach him, her arms spread wide, but he repulsed her with a wave of his hand. An old woman with a stiff, aristocratic air pushed her way through the crowd without a word and took him in her arms. He lowered his head, kissed both her hands for a long time, clasped her tightly to his breast and then turned away his face. Mute and dry-eyed, the old woman remained where she was a few moments longer and looked at him.

“You have my blessing,” she murmured finally, and she went and leaned against the rock opposite, together with the gypsy sheep dogs that were stretched out in the scanty shade, panting.

Stamping his foot on the ground, the centurion leaped back into the saddle so that everyone could see and hear him. Brandishing his whip over the multitude to command silence, he spoke. “Listen to my words, Hebrews. Rome speaks. Quiet!”

He pointed with his thumb to the Zealot, who had already removed his rags and was standing under the sun, waiting.

“This man who now stands naked before the Roman Empire lifted his hand against Rome. While still a youth he pulled down the imperial eagles; then he took to the mountains and besought all of you to join him there and to raise the banner, telling you that the day had come when the Messiah would issue from your bowels and destroy Rome!… Quiet out there, stop your shouting!… Rebellion, murder, betrayal: those are his crimes. And now listen, Hebrews, listen to what I ask-I want you to be the ones to pass sentence. What punishment does he deserve?”

He swept his eyes over the crowd below him and waited. The people were in an uproar. They bellowed, pushed one another, left the area assigned to them and rushed up to the centurion, right to the feet of his horse, but then immediately recoiled in terror and flowed back in the opposite direction, like a wave.

The centurion grew furious. Spurring his horse, he advanced toward the multitude.

“I ask you,” he roared, “what punishment for the rebel, the murderer, the traitor-what punishment?”

The redbeard bolted forward in a frenzy, no longer able to control his heart. He wanted to shout “Long live freedom!” and had already parted his lips, but his companion Barabbas seized him and placed his hand over his mouth.

For a long moment there was no sound except a rumble like that of the sea. No one dared speak, but everyone groaned quietly, sighing and gasping for breath. Suddenly a shrill voice was heard above this unsettled din. Everyone turned, both out of joy and fear. The old rabbi had climbed once more onto the redbeard’s shoulders. Lifting both his skeleton-like hands as though he wished to pray or bring down a curse, he boldly cried, “What punishment? The royal crown!”

Feeling sorry for him, the people bellowed in an effort to drown out his voice. The centurion did not hear.

“What did you say, Rabbi?” he called, cupping his hand over his ear and spurring his horse.

“The royal crown!” the rabbi repeated with all his might. His face gleamed, his whole body was on fire; he shook, jumped, danced upon the blacksmith’s shoulders: it seemed he wanted to take to the air and fly.

“The royal crown!” he shouted again, delighted that he had become the mouth of his people and of his God, and he stretched forth his arms to either side as though he were being crucified in the air.

The centurion went wild. Jumping off his horse and unhooking the whip from its place on the saddle horn, he advanced toward the crowd with heavy steps. Shifting the stones, he advanced silently, like some heavy beast, a buffalo or a wild boar. The crowd stood motionless, holding its breath. Once more nothing could be heard except the grasshoppers in the olive grove, and the impatient crows.

He took two steps, then one more, and stopped. The stench from the open mouths and sweaty, unwashed bodies had hit him. The Jewry! He advanced farther and arrived in front of the rabbi. The old man was looking down on him from his place atop the blacksmith’s shoulders, a smile of beatitude spread over his entire face. All his life he had longed for this moment, and now it had come: the moment when he too would be killed, just like the prophets.

The centurion half closed his eyes and glanced at him. It was with a great effort that he controlled his arm, which had already risen to smash the old rebellious head with a single blow. But he checked his fury, for it was not in Rome ’s interests to kill the old man. This accursed unyielding people would rise to its feet again and start a guerrilla war, and it was not in Rome ’s interests to have to thrust its hand once more into this wasps’ nest of Jews. Governing his strength, therefore, he wrapped the whip around his arm and turned to the rabbi. His voice had grown hoarse.

“Rabbi, your face is deemed worthy of reverence only because I revere it, only because I, Rome, want to give it value-of itself it has none. That is why I’m not going to lift my whip. I heard you; you passed sentence. Now I shall do the same.”

He turned to the two gypsies, who stood on either side of the cross, waiting. “Crucify him!” he howled.

“I passed sentence,” the rabbi said in a tranquil voice, “and so did you, Centurion. But there remains one, the most important of all, who must also pass sentence.”

“The emperor?”

“No… God.”

The centurion laughed. “I am the mouth of the emperor in Nazareth; the emperor is the mouth of God in the world. God, emperor and Rufus have passed sentence.”

This said, he unwound the whip from around his arm and started toward the top of the hill, maniacally lashing the stones and thorns below him.

An old man lifted his arms to heaven. “May God heap the sin upon your head, Satan, and upon the heads of your children and your children’s children!”

The bronze cavalrymen meanwhile had formed a circle around the cross. Below, snorting with wrath, the people stretched on tiptoe in order to see. They were trembling with anguish: would the miracle happen, or not? Many searched the sky to see when the heavens would open. The women had already discerned multicolored wings in the air. The rabbi, kneeling on the blacksmith’s broad shoulders, struggled to see between the horses’ hoofs and the cavalrymen’s red cloaks. He wanted to discover what was happening above, around the cross. He looked, looked at the summit of hope, at the summit of despair-looked, and did not speak. He was waiting. The old rabbi knew him, knew him well, this God of Israel. He was merciless and had his own laws, his own decalogue. Yes, he gave his word and kept it, but he was in no hurry: he measured time with his own measure. For generations and generations his Word would remain inoperative in the air and not come down to earth. And when it did come down at last, woe and three times woe to the man to whom he decided to entrust it! How often, from one end of Holy Scripture to the other, had God’s elect been killed-but had God ever lifted a finger to save them? Why? Why? Didn’t they follow his will? Or was it perhaps his will that all the elect should be killed? The rabbi asked himself these questions but dared not push his thoughts any further. God is an abyss, he reflected, an abyss. I’d better not go near!

The son of Mary still sat off to one side on his stone. He held his trembling knees tightly with both his hands, and watched. The two gypsies had seized the Zealot; Roman guards came forward too, and they all pushed and pulled amidst cursing and laughter, struggling to raise the rebel up onto the cross. When the sheep dogs saw the struggle they understood and jumped to their feet.

The noble old mother drew away from the rock she had been leaning against, and advanced. “Courage, my son,” she cried. “Do not groan, do not make us ashamed of you!”

“It’s the Zealot’s mother,” murmured the old rabbi, “his noble mother, descended from the Maccabees!”

Two thick ropes had now been passed under the rebel’s armpits The gypsies hooked ladders over the arms of the cross and began to lift him up, slowly. He had a huge, heavy body, and suddenly the cross tilted and was about to topple over. The centurion kicked the son of Mary, who rose on unsure feet, took the pickax and went to steady the cross with stones and wedges so that it would not fall.

This was too much for Mary, his mother. Ashamed to see her beloved son one with the crucifiers, she fortified her heart and elbowed her way through the crowd. The fishermen of Gennesaret felt sorry for her and pretended they did not see her. She started to rush in among the horses in order to grasp her son and take him away, but an elderly neighbor took pity on her and seized her by the arm. “Mary,” she said, “don’t do that. Where are you going? They’ll kill you!”

“I want to bring my son out of there,” Mary replied, and she burst into tears.

“Don’t cry, Mary,” said the old woman. “Look at the other mother. She stands without moving and watches them crucify her son. Look at her and take heart.”

“I don’t weep for my son alone, neighbor; I weep also for that mother.”

The old woman, who had doubtless suffered much in her life, shook her balding head. “It’s better to be the mother of the crucifier,” she murmured, “than of the crucified.”

But Mary was in a hurry and did not hear. She started up the hill, her tear-filled eyes searching everywhere for her son. The whole world began to weep. It grew dim, and within the deep mist the mother discerned horses and bronze armor and an immense newly hewn cross which stretched from earth to sky.

A cavalryman turned and saw her. Lifting his lance, he nodded for her to go back. The mother stopped. Stooping down, she looked under the horses’ bellies and saw her son. He was on his knees, wielding the pickax and making the cross fast in the stones.

“My child,” she cried, “Jesus!”

So heart-rending was the mother’s cry, it rose above the entire tumult of men, horses and famished, barking dogs. The son turned and saw his mother. His face darkened and he resumed his strokes more furiously than before.

The gypsies, mounted on the rope ladders, had stretched the Zealot on the cross, keeping him tied with ropes so that he would not slip down. Now they took up their nails and began to nail his hands. Heavy drops of hot blood splashed Jesus’ face. Abandoning his pickax, he stepped back in terror, retreated behind the horses and found himself next to the mother of the man who was so soon to die. Trembling, he waited to hear the sound of ripping flesh. All his blood massed in the very center of each of his hands; the veins swelled and throbbed violently-they seemed about to burst. In his palms he felt a painful spot, round like the head of a nail

His mother’s voice rang out once again: “Jesus, my child!”

A deep bellow rumbled down from the cross, a wild cry from the bowels not of the man, but from the very bowels of the earth: “Adonai!”

The people heard it-it tore into their entrails. Was it themselves, the people, who had shouted? or the earth? or the man on the cross as the first nail was driven in? All were one, all were being crucified. People, earth and Zealot: all were bellowing. The blood spurted out and splashed the horses; a large drop fell on Jesus’ lips. It was hot, salty. The cross-maker staggered, but his mother rushed forward in time to catch him in her arms, and he did not fall.

“My boy,” she murmured again. “Jesus…”

But his eyes were closed. He felt unbearable pain in his hands, feet and heart.

The aristocratic old lady stood motionless and watched her son’s spasms on the two crossed boards. She bit her lips and was silent. But then behind her she heard the son of the Carpenter and his mother. The anger rose up in her and she turned. This was the apostate Jew who constructed her son’s cross, this the mother who bore him. Why should a son like this, a traitor, why should he live while her son writhed and bellowed upon the cross! Driven on by her grievance, she stretched forth both her hands toward the son of the Carpenter. She drew near and stood directly before him. He lifted his eyes and saw her. She was pale, wild, merciless. He saw her, and lowered his head. Her lips moved.

“My curse upon you,” she said wildly, hoarsely, “my curse upon you, Son of the Carpenter. As you crucified another, may you be crucified yourself!”

She turned to the mother. “And you, Mary, may you feel the pain that I have felt!”

As soon as she had spoken, she turned her head and riveted her eyes once more upon her son. Magdalene was now embracing the foot of the cross and singing the dirge for the Zealot, her hands touching his feet, her hair and arms covered with blood.

The gypsies took their knives and began to slash the crucified man’s clothing in order to portion out the pieces. Throwing lots, they divided his rags. Nothing remained but his white headcloth, splotched with large drops of blood.

“Let’s give it to the son of the Carpenter,” they said. “Poor fellow, he did a good job too.”

They found him sitting in the sun, curled up and shivering.

“That’s your share, Carpenter,” one of them called, tossing him the bloody kerchief. “Best wishes for many more crucifixions to come!”

“And here’s to your own, Carpenter!” said the other gypsy, laughing, and he patted him lovingly on the back.