The Last Temptation of Christ

Chapter Five

LET US GO, my children,” cried the old rabbi, opening wide his arms to collect the bewildered mass of despairing men and women. “Let us go! I have a great secret to reveal to you. Courage!”

They began to run through the narrow lanes. Behind them raced the cavalry, herding them on. The housewives shrieked and closed their doors-more blood was going to be spilled. The old rabbi fell twice while running and started to cough again and spit up blood. Judas and Barabbas took him in their arms. The people arrived in flocks and burrowed into the synagogue, panting. They stuffed themselves in, filled the courtyard too, and bolted the street door.

They waited, hanging upon the rabbi’s lips. Amid so much bitterness, what secret could the old man divulge to them to gladden their hearts? For years now they had suffered misfortune after misfortune, crucifixion after crucifixion. God’s apostles continually sprouted out of Jerusalem, the Jordan, the desert, or rushed down from the mountains dressed in rags and chains and frothing at the mouth-and every one of them was crucified.

An angry murmur arose. The branches and palm trees which decorated the walls, the pentagrams, the sacred scrolls on the lectern with their pompous words: chosen people, promised land, kingdom of heaven, Messiah-none of these could comfort them any longer. Hope, lasting too long, had begun to turn to despair. God is not in a hurry, but man is, and they could wait no longer. Not even the painted hopes which took up both walls of the synagogue could deceive them now. Once while reading the prophet Ezekiel the rabbi had been swept away by God. He jumped up, shouted, wept and danced, but still did not find relief. The prophet’s words had become part of his flesh. In order to relieve himself he took brushes and paint, locked himself in the synagogue and began in a divine frenzy to cover the wall with the prophet’s visions: endless desert, skulls and bones, mountains of human skeletons, and, above, a heaven brilliantly red, like red-hot iron. A gigantic hand shot out from the center of the heavens, seized Ezekiel by the scruff of the neck and held him suspended in the air. But the vision overflowed onto the other wall as well. Here Ezekiel stood plunged up to his knees in bones. His mouth was bright green and open, and coming from inside was a ribbon with red letters: “People of Israel, people of Israel, the Messiah has come!” The bones strung themselves together, the skulls rose up full of teeth and mud, and the terrible hand emerged from heaven holding the New Jerusalem in its palm-the New Jerusalem, freshly built, brilliantly illuminated, all emeralds and rubies!

The people looked at these paintings and shook their heads, murmuring. This angered the old rabbi.

“Why do you murmur?” he shouted at them. “Don’t you believe in the God of our fathers? One more has been crucified: the Saviour has come one step closer. That, you men of little faith, is what crucifixion means!”

He seized a scroll from the lectern and unrolled it with a violent movement. The sun entered through the open window; a stork descended from the sky and alighted on the roof of the house opposite, as though it too wanted to hear. Out of the devastated chest bounded the happy, triumphant cry: “ ‘Sound in Zion the trumpet of victory! Proclaim in Jerusalem the joyous news! Shout! Jehovah has come to his people. Rise up, Jerusalem, lift high your hearts! Look! From east and west the Lord herds your sons. The mountains have been leveled, the hills have fled, all the trees have poured forth their perfume. Put on the trappings of your glory, Jerusalem. Happiness has come to the people of Israel forever and ever.’ ”

“When, when?” was heard from the crowd. Everyone turned. A tiny old man, slim, and wrinkled like a raisin, had stood up on tiptoe. “When, Father, when?” he was shouting.

The rabbi angrily rolled up the prophecies.

“Are you in a hurry, Manases?” he asked.

“Yes!” answered the tiny old man. Tears were running down his face. “I have no time; I’m going to die.”

The rabbi stretched forth his arm and pointed to Ezekiel buried in the bones.

“Look, Manases! You’ll be resurrected!”

“I’m old, I tell you, and blind: I cannot see.”

Peter intervened. The day was nearing its end. At night he fished the lake of Gennesaret, and he was pressed. “Father,” he said, “you promised us a secret to comfort our hearts. What is that secret?”

Holding their breath, they all crowded around the old rabbi. As many as could fit came in from the courtyard. The heat was intense and there was a heavy smell of human sweat. The sexton threw tear-shaped pellets of cedar sap into the censer to deodorize the air.

The old rabbi climbed up onto a stall to avoid suffocating.

“My children,” he said, wiping away his sweat, “our hearts have filled with crosses. My black beard long ago turned gray, my gray beard turned white, my teeth fell to the ground. What old Manases cried I’ve been crying for years: ‘How long, Lord, how long? Shall I die without seeing the Messiah?’ I asked this over and over again, and one night the miracle happened: God answered. No, that was not the miracle. God replies every time we question him, but our flesh is bemired and almost deaf: we do not hear. That night, however, I heard-and that was the miracle.”

“What did you hear? Tell us everything, Father,” Peter called. He elbowed his way through the crowd and stood in front of the rabbi. The old man bent over, looked at Peter and smiled.

“God, Peter, is a fisherman like yourself. He too goes out to fish at night when the moon is full or nearly full; and that night it was full-it sailed in the sky as white as milk, so exceedingly merciful and benevolent that I could not close my eyes. The house constricted me. I marched through the narrow lanes and left Nazareth, climbed up high, perched on a rock and stared toward the south-toward holy Jerusalem. The moon leaned over and looked at me like a human being, smiling; I looked at it-at its mouth, its cheeks, at the corners of its eyes-and sighed. I felt it was speaking to me, speaking to me out of the silence of the night: yet I could not hear… Not a leaf stirred on the earth; the unmown plain smelled just like bread, milk cascaded down the mountains around me, down Tabor, Gilboa and Carmel… This is God’s night, I thought. This full moon must be the nocturnal face of the Lord. Nights in the future Jerusalem will be such as this.

“No sooner had this thought come to me than my eyes filled with tears. Grievance and fear took hold of me. ‘I’ve grown old,’ I shouted. ‘Am I going to die without the Messiah first having gladdened my sight?’

“I jumped to my feet. The sacred fury had seized me again. Removing my belt and all my clothes, I stood before God’s eyes just as I was when my mother begot me. I wanted him to see how I had aged, how I’d withered and shriveled up like a fig leaf in autumn, like the bare dangling stem of a cluster of grapes which has been plundered by birds. I wanted him to see me, pity me, and move quickly!

“And as I stood there stark naked before the Lord, I felt the moonlight penetrate my flesh. I had become wholly spirit: one with God, I heard his voice, not from outside or above, but from within me. Within me! God’s true voice always comes to us from within. ‘Simeon, Simeon,’ I heard, ‘I shall not let you die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’

“ ‘Lord, say that again!’ I cried.

“ ‘Simeon, Simeon, I shall not let you die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’

“I was so happy, I went out of my mind. Stark naked, I began to dance under the moon, clapping my hands and stamping my feet on the ground. I don’t know if this dance lasted a split second or a thousand years, but in any case I had enough finally-I found relief. Putting on my clothes and buckling my belt, I went down to Nazareth. The moment the cocks saw me from their perches high up on the rooftops they began to crow. The sky laughed, the birds awoke, doors opened and bade me good morning. My shabby house glittered from top to bottom-doors, windows, everything: all rubies. Wood, rocks, men, birds: all smelled the presence of God around me. The centurion himself, bloodsucker that he is, halted with astonishment. ‘What’s the matter with you, rabbi?’ he asked me. ‘You’re a lighted torch. Watch out, don’t set Nazareth on fire!’ But I said nothing: I did not want him to soil my breath.

“I’ve kept this secret hidden close to my skin for years and years. I’ve enjoyed it all by myself, jealously and proudly-and I’ve waited. But today, this black day that has seen a new cross nailed into our hearts, I am unable to guard it any longer. I pity the people of Israel. Therefore I unveil to you the joyous news: he is coming, he is no longer far away. He has probably stopped for a drink of water at some near-by well, or for a slice of bread at some oven where the loaves have just been removed. But no matter where he is, he will appear-because God said so, and what he says, he does not unsay. ‘Simeon, you will not die before you have seen the Messiah, heard him, and grasped him with your hands!’… I feel my strength leaving me day by day, but to the degree it departs, by so much does the Saviour approach. I am eighty-five years old. He cannot delay any more!”

A hairless cross-eyed man with a sharp, skinny snout jumped up. He looked as though someone had forgotten to add the yeast when he was kneaded.

“But what if you live a thousand years, Father?” he interrupted. ‘What if you never die? We’ve seen that happen. Enoch and Elijah are still alive!” His tiny wry eyes flitted slyly from side to side.

The rabbi pretended that he had not heard, but the cross-eyed man’s hissed words were knives in his heart. He lifted his hand commandingly. “I want to be alone with God. Leave-all of you!”

The place emptied out, the crowd dispersed, the old rabbi remained all by himself. He locked the street door and fell deep into thought, leaning against the wall where the prophet Ezekiel hovered in the air. He is God, he reflected, and omnipotent: he does what he likes. Can that rascal Thomas be right? Woe is me if God decides I should live a thousand years! And if he decides I should never die-then the Messiah… Are the great hopes of the race of Israel all in vain? It has held the Word of God in its womb for thousands of years, nourishing it as a mother nourishes her seed. Our flesh and bone have been devoured: we have melted away, living only for this Son. But now the race has gone into labor; Abraham’s seed cries out. Release it, Lord, release it at last! You are God, you can endure-we cannot. Mercy!

He paced up and down the synagogue. The day had finally waned. The shadows snuffed out the paintings and swallowed Ezekiel. The old rabbi looked at the penumbra which descended about him, and suddenly all that he had seen and suffered in his life rushed into his mind. How many times and with what longing he had run from Galilee to Jerusalem, then from Jerusalem to the desert in pursuit of the Messiah! But without fail a cross had put an end to his hopes and he had returned to Nazareth ashamed. Today, however…

He squeezed his head between his hands.

“No, no,” he murmured in terror, “no, no, it’s impossible!”

For days and nights now his mind had been drumming and ready to split. A new hope had come to him, a hope too large for his mind-a madness, a demon which was devouring him. But this was not the first time. This madness had been digging its claws into his mind for years. He would banish it, and it would come again. But it had never dared appear during the day; it had always come in the darkness of night, or in his dreams. Today, however, today-at noon, in broad daylight!… Was he the one?

He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes. There he was, passing once more in front of him, gasping, with the cross on his back; and all about him the air trembled, just as it must tremble around the archangels… Look! he raised his eyes. Never had the old rabbi seen so much of heaven in the eyes of man! Was he the one? “Lord, Lord,” the rabbi murmured, “why do you torment me? Why don’t you answer?”

The prophecies tore like lightning flashes through his mind. At one moment his aged head filled with light, at the next it sank without hope into the darkness. His bowels opened and the patriarchs came forth. Within him, his hard-necked persevering race, covered with wounds and led by Moses, the head ram with the twisted horns, started again on its endless journey from the Land of Slavery to the Land of Canaan; then the journey continued from the Land of Canaan to the future Jerusalem. In this new march, however, it was not the patriarch Moses who blazed the trail, but another-the rabbi’s mind throbbed-another, bearing a cross upon his shoulder…

He reached the street door with one bound and opened it. The wind hit his face; he inhaled deeply. The sun had set; the birds were going home to sleep. The narrow streets filled with shadows; the earth grew cool. He locked the door and slipped the heavy key under his belt. For an instant he lost courage, but then all at once he made his decision. Head bowed, he set out toward Mary’s house.

Mary sat on a high stool in the tiny yard of her house. She was spinning. It was still bright outside: the summer light drew slowly away from the face of the earth and did not wish to leave. Men and oxen were returning from their work in the fields. Housewives lighted fires for the evening cooking; the fragrance of burning wood invaded the afternoon air. Mary spun, and her mind twirled now this way, now that-together with the spindle. Memory and imagination joined: her life seemed half truth, half fable. The petty round of daily tasks had lasted for years, and then suddenly the stunning uninvited peacock-the miracle-had come and covered her tormented existence with its long golden wings.

“Take me where you want, Lord; do with me what you will. You chose my husband, you presented me with my son, you gave me my suffering. You tell me to cry out and I cry out; you tell me to keep still and I keep still. What am I, Lord? A handful of mud in your hands, and you knead me as you please. Do what you want. There is only one thing I beg of you: Lord, pity my son!”

A brilliantly white dove flew down from the roof opposite, beat its wings for a moment over her head and then alighted with dignity on the pebbles of the yard and began to walk methodically around and around Mary’s feet. It spread its tail feathers, bent its neck, turned its head and looked at Mary, its round eye flashing in the evening light like a ruby. It looked at her, spoke to her. It must want to inform me of some secret, she said to herself. Oh, if the old rabbi would only come. He knows all about the language of the birds and could interpret for me… She looked at the dove and felt sorry for it. Leaving her spindle, she called the bird in a very tender voice, and the delighted dove took a hop and landed on her joined knees. And there, as though its whole secret was that it had been longing to reach those knees, it squatted, drew in its wings, and remained motionless.

Mary felt the sweet weight and smiled. Ah, if it were possible for God always to come down so sweetly over men! As she thought this, she recalled the morning she and her fiancé Joseph had climbed to the prophet Elijah’s summit, to heaven-kissed Carmel. They wanted to beg the fiery prophet to mediate with God so that they might have a son, whom they would then dedicate to the prophet’s grace. They were to marry that same evening and had departed before dawn to receive the blessing of this flaming prophet whose great joy was the thunderbolt. Not a cloud in the sky; it was a lovely autumn. The human ants had gathered in their crops; the must was boiling in the jars; the figs drying, strung up on the rafters. Mary was fifteen at the time, her groom an old man with gray hair, but in his firm hand he held as a support the staff which had been foreordained to blossom.

They reached the holy summit at exactly noon. They knelt and touched the sharp, blood-stained granite with their fingertips, trembling. A spark flew out of the rock and cut Mary’s hand. Joseph opened his mouth to call the summit’s wild inhabitant, but before he could utter a sound the bellowing hail-laden clouds bounded angrily down from the foundations of heaven and formed a swirling funnel over the sharp granite. As Joseph darted forward to clasp his fiancée and take her to the shelter of some cave, God slung a terrifying flash of lightning, heaven and earth joined and Mary fell over backward in a swoon. When she came to and opened her eyes and looked around her, she saw Joseph lying face down on the black granite-paralyzed…

Mary placed her hand on the dove which sat upon her knees. She caressed it lightly so that she would not frighten it. “God descended in a savage form on top of the mountain and spoke to me in a savage way,” she murmured. “What did he say to me?”

She had often been questioned on this by the rabbi, who was bewildered by the repeated miracles which surrounded her.

“Try to remember, Mary,” he would say. “This is the way God sometimes speaks to men-by means of the thunderbolt. Fight hard to remember, so that we may discover your son’s fate.”

“There was thunder, Father. It rolled down from heaven like a creaking ox cart.”

“And behind the thunder, Mary?”

“Yes, you’re right, Father. God spoke behind the thunder, but I wasn’t able to discover the actual words. Forgive me.”

Caressing the dove, she struggled to bring the lightning back to mind after thirty years and to untangle its hidden meaning.

She closed her eyes. In her palm she felt the dove’s tiny warm body and beating heart. Suddenly-she did not realize how, she did not know why-dove and lightning were one; she was sure of it: these heartbeats and the thunder-all were God! She uttered a cry and jumped up in terror. Now, for the first time, she was able to make out the words hidden in the thunder, hidden in the dove’s cooing: “Hail, Mary… Hail, Mary…” Without a doubt, this was what God had cried: “Hail, Mary…”

Turning, she saw her husband propped up against the wall, still opening and closing his mouth. It was dark now, yet he still toiled and sweated. She went to the doorway, passing in front of him but not speaking to him. She wanted to see if by any chance her son was coming. She had watched him twist the crucified man’s bloody kerchief over his hair and start down the road toward the plain. Where had he gone? Why was he late? Was he going to stay out in the fields again until daybreak?

As she stood on the threshold she saw the old rabbi approaching. He was puffing, leaning heavily on his crosier. The tufts of white hair at each of his temples waved in the evening breeze which had begun to come down from Mount Carmel.

Mary stepped to one side with respect, and the rabbi entered. He took his brother’s hand, patted it, but did not speak to him-what could he say? His mind submerged in dark waters, he turned to Mary.

“Your eyes are shining, Mary,” he said. “What’s the matter? Did God come again?”

“Father, I’ve found it!” said Mary, unable to restrain herself.

“You’ve found it? Found what, in God’s name?”

“The words behind the lightning.”

The rabbi gave a start. “Great is the God of Israel,” he cried, lifting high his arms. “This was precisely why I came, Mary, to ask you once more. Today, as you know, one of our hopes was crucified, and my heart…”

“I’ve found it, Father,” Mary repeated. “While I was sitting this evening and spinning and thinking again about the lightning, I felt the thunder grow quiet within me for the first time, and behind it I heard a serene, clear voice, the voice of God: ‘Hail, Mary’!”

The rabbi collapsed onto a stool. Squeezing his temples between his hands, he plunged deep into thought. After a considerable interval he lifted his head.

“Nothing else, Mary? Bend far down within yourself so that you’ll be sure to hear. The fate of Israel may depend on what you say.”

When Mary heard the rabbi’s words she became terrified. Her breast began to tremble, and once more her mind strained to discover what was behind the thunder.

“No,” she murmured finally, exhausted, “no, Father. He said more, much more, but I can’t hear it. I’m trying as hard as I can, but I cannot hear what he said.”

The rabbi placed his hand on top of her head, above her large eyes.

“Fast, Mary, and pray; do not dissipate your mind on daily tasks. There are times when a glowing halo as bright as lightning moves all around your face. Is it truly light, I wonder? I can’t tell. Fast, pray, and you will hear. ‘Hail, Mary…’: God’s message begins with kindness. Try hard to hear what follows.”

In order to hide her agitation Mary went to the shelf where she kept the jugs. She unhooked a brass cup, filled it with cool water, got a handful of dates also, and bent over to hand them to the old man.

“I’m not hungry or thirsty, Mary,” he said, “thank you. Sit down; I have something to say to you.”

Mary took the lowest stool and sat at the rabbi’s feet. Tipping up her head, she waited.

The old man tested the words one by one in his mind. What be wanted to say was difficult: it was a hope so spidery fine and slippery that he was unable to find words spidery and slippery enough to avoid giving the hope too much weight and turning it into a certainty. He did not want to terrify the mother.

“Mary,” he said finally, “a mystery roams outside this house, like a desert lion. You are not the same as other women, Mary. Don’t you feel that?”

“No, I don’t, Father,” she murmured. “I am like all women. I love all the cares and joys of women. I like to wash, to cook, to go to the fountain for water, to chat merrily with the neighbors; and, in the evening, to sit in my doorway and watch the passers-by. And my heart, Father, like the hearts of all women, is full of pain.”

“You’re not the same as other women, Mary,” the rabbi repeated in a solemn tone, raising his hand as though he wished to prevent all objections. “And your son…”

The rabbi stopped. How could he find words to express this, the most difficult part of all. He looked up at the heavens and listened. Some of the birds in the trees were preparing to go to sleep, others to wake up. The wheel turned; the day sank below men’s feet.

The rabbi sighed. How the days rushed by, how rabidly one pursued the next! Dawn, dusk, the passage of the sun, the passage of moon after moon; children became men, black hairs whitened, the sea ate into the land, mountains were stripped bare-and still the One they awaited did not come!

“My son?” said Mary, her voice trembling. “My son, Father?”

“He is not like other sons, Mary,” the rabbi boldly replied.

He weighed his words once more, and continued after a moment. “Sometimes when he is alone during the night and thinks no one is watching him, the whole circumference of his face gleams in the darkness. May God forgive me, Mary, but I’ve made a small hole high in the wall. I climb up and watch him from there; I spy on what he does. Why? Because-I confess it-I’m completely confused; my knowledge is of no help whatsoever: I unroll the Scriptures tirelessly but I cannot comprehend what or who he is. I spy on him in secret, therefore, and in the darkness I discern this light which licks him and devours his face. That is why he’s been growing paler day by day and melting away. It’s not because of sickness, fasting or prayer; no, he is being devoured by this light.”

Mary sighed. Woe betide the mother who bears a son unlike all the rest, she thought. But she did not speak.

The old man bent over her now and lowered his voice. His lips were on fire.

“Hail, Mary,” he said. “God is all-powerful; his designs are inscrutable. Your son might be…”

But the unfortunate mother uttered a cry: “Have pity on me, Father! A prophet? No, no! And if God has it so written, let him rub it out! I want my son a man like everyone else, nothing more, nothing less. Like everyone else… Let him build troughs, cradles, plows and household utensils as his father used to do, and not, as just now, crosses to crucify human beings. Let him marry a nice young girl from a respectable home-with a dowry; let him be a liberal provider, have children, and then we’ll all go out together every Saturday to the promenade-grandma, children and grandchildren-so that everyone can admire us.”

The rabbi leaned heavily on his crosier and got up. “Mary,” he said severely, “if God listened to mothers we would all rot away in a bog of security and easy living… When you’re alone, think over everything we have said.”

He turned to his brother in order to bid him good night. Joseph, his glassy eyes misty and his tongue hanging out, stared into the air, struggling to speak.

Mary shook her head. “He’s been fighting since morning and still hasn’t freed himself.” She went up to him and sponged the contorted, drooling mouth.

But the moment the rabbi held out his hand to say good night to Mary also, the door opened furtively and the son appeared on the threshold, his face gleaming in the darkness. The gory kerchief was pasted to his hair, but the night obscured the large tears which still furrowed his cheeks, as well as the dust and blood which coated his feet.

He strode over the threshold, looked hastily about him, discovered his mother and the rabbi and, in the darkness near the wall, his father’s glassy eyes.

Mary started to light the lamp, but the rabbi held her back.

“Wait,” he murmured. “I’ll talk to him.” Emboldening his heart, he approached.

“Jesus,” he said tenderly, lowering his voice so that the mother would not hear, “Jesus, my child, how long are you going to resist him?”

And then the entire cottage shook with the savage shout: “Until I die!”

All at once, as though every ounce of strength had flowed out of him, the son of Mary collapsed to the ground and leaned against the wall, gasping for breath. The rabbi wanted to speak to him again. He leaned over him but immediately drew back with a jolt. He felt as though he had approached a great fire and burned his face. God is all around him, he reflected: yes, it’s God who is around him, and he lets no one come near. I’d better leave!

He departed, plunged in thought. The door closed, but Mary did not dare light the lamp: a wild beast lay in wait for her in the darkness. Standing in the middle of the house, she listened to her husband’s hopeless clucking and to her son who, fallen in a heap on the ground, gasped in terror as though being strangled. Someone was choking him-who? The unfortunate mother dug her nails into her cheeks and asked God, asked him again, complained, shouted: “I’m a mother; don’t you pity me?”-but no one answered.

And while she stood there, fixed and speechless, hearing every vein in her body tremble, there was a wild, triumphant cry. The tongue of the paralyzed man had been loosed and the entire word had issued at last from his contorted mouth, syllable by syllable, and reverberated throughout the house: A-DO-NA-I! But as the old man unmouthed this word, he sank instantaneously, like lead, into the depths of sleep.

Mary nerved herself and lighted the lamp. The food was boiling. Going to the hearth, she knelt and removed the lid of the earthenware pot to see if any water was needed, or perhaps a pinch of salt.