The Last Temptation of Christ

Chapter Six

THE SKY SHONE bluish white. Nazareth was asleep and dreaming, the Morning Star tolled the hours over its pillows, the lemon and date trees were still wrapped in a rosy-blue veil. Deep silence… Not even the black cock had crowed. The son of Mary opened the door. Dark blue rings circled his eyes, but his hand did not tremble. He opened the door, and without closing it again, without looking back to see either his mother or his father, he abandoned the paternal roof forever. He took two steps, three, and stopped. He thought he heard two heavy feet moving along with him. He looked behind him: no one. He tightened the nail-studded leather belt, tied the red-spotted kerchief over his hair and went down the narrow, twisting lanes. A dog barked at him mournfully; an owl sensed the approach of day, took fright and flew silently away over his head. He hurriedly left the bolted doors behind him and came out into the gardens and orchards. The first song birds had already begun to twitter. In a kitchen garden an old man was in harness, turning the winch over an irrigation well. The day had begun.

He had neither wallet, staff nor sandals, and the road was long. He would have to go past Cana, Tiberias, Magdala and Capernaum, then circle the lake. of Gennesaret and enter the desert. He had heard of a monastery there for simple, virtuous men: they dressed all in white, ate no meat, drank no wine, never touched a woman-did nothing but pray to God. They were versed in herbs and healed the diseases of the body; they were versed also in secret charms and cured the soul of devils. How many times had his uncle the rabbi spoken to him, sighing continually, about this holy monastery! He had spent eleven years there as a monk, praising God and healing men. But alas! one day he was mounted by the Tempter (he too, of course, is almighty): he saw a woman, abandoned the holy life, stripped off his white cassock, married-and fathered Magdalene. Served him right! God gave the apostate his just reward…

“That’s where I’ll go,” murmured the son of Mary, quickening his pace. “There, inside the monastery, I shall hide under his wings.

What a joy this was! What a long time-ever since his twelfth birthday-he had longed to abandon house and parents, to forget the past, escape his mother’s admonitions, his father’s bellowing and the petty workaday cares which devour the soul; had longed to shake Man from his feet like so much dust and to flee and take refuge in the desert! Today-finally-he had thrown everything behind him with one toss, had extricated himself from man’s wheel and taken hold, body and soul, of God’s. He was saved!

His pale, embittered face suddenly gleamed. Perhaps God’s claws had clutched him all those years precisely in order to bring him where he was now going of his own volition, free of the claws. Did this mean that his desires were beginning to join with those of God? Wasn’t this the greatest and most difficult of man’s duties? Wasn’t this the meaning of happiness?

His heart felt relieved. No more claws, no more wrestling and screaming. This morning at daybreak God had come filled with compassion, had come like a cool, gentle breeze and said to him, “Let us go!” He had opened the door; and now-what a delicious feeling of reconciliation, what happiness! “It is too much for me,” he murmured. “I shall lift high my head and sing the psalm of salvation: ‘You are my shelter and my refuge, Lord…’ ” His joy could not be contained in his heart; it overflowed. He proceeded in the sweet light of the dawn, surrounded by God’s great wealth-olive trees, vineyards, wheatfields; and the psalm of joy bounded out of his loins, trying to reach the sky. He lifted high his head and opened his mouth, but suddenly his heart skipped a beat: he had just clearly heard two bare feet running behind him. He shortened his stride and listened carefully. The two feet checked their pace. His knees gave way and he stopped. The two feet stopped also.

“I know who it is,” he whispered, trembling. “I know…”

But he emboldened his heart and whirled abruptly in order to catch sight of her before she vanished… No one!

The eastern sky had turned dark cherry. The ears of grain were fully ripe; the stalks inclined their heads in the windless air and awaited the sickle. Not a single object was on the plain-not a beast, not a man. Only in Nazareth, behind him, was there any sign of life. Smoke had already begun to rise from one or two houses. The women were awakening.

He felt somewhat reassured. Better not lose time, he reflected. Let’s run for all I’m worth and get around to the other side of that hill, to lose her. He started to run.

On the other side of him the wheat towered to the height of a man. It was here in this plain of Galilee that wheat had originated, as had the vine, and wild vines still crept up the mountainsides. An ox cart creaked in the distance. Donkeys shook themselves up off the ground, sniffed the air, lifted their tails and braved. He heard laughter and chattering. Honed sickles flashed; the first mowers appeared. The sun saw them and fell on their lovely arms, necks and shins.

When they glimpsed the son of Mary running in the distance they burst out laughing.

“Hey there, who are you chasing,” they called to him, “or who’s chasing you?”

But when he came closer and they were able to get a better view of him, they knew who he was. They all stopped their chatter and huddled one next to the other.

“The cross-maker!” they murmured. “A curse on him! Yesterday I saw him crucify…”

“Look at the gory kerchief he’s wearing!”

“It was his share of the clothes of the Crucified. May the blood of the innocent fall upon his head!”

They continued hurriedly on their way, but now the laughter stuck in their throats and they were silent.

The son of Mary went past them, left them behind him, crossed the wheatfields and reached the vineyards which covered the gentle slopes of the mountain. Seeing a fig tree, he started to slow down in order to pick a leaf and smell it. He liked the smell of fig leaves very much: they reminded him of human armpits. When he was little he used to close his eyes and smell the leaves, and he imagined he was snuggled again at his mother’s breast, sucking… But the moment he stopped and put out his hand to pick the leaf, cold sweat poured over his body. The two feet-which had been running behind him-suddenly stopped too. His hair stood on end. His arm still in the air, he looked all around him. Solitude. No one but God. The soil was wet, the leaves dripping; in the hollow of a tree a butterfly struggled to open its dewy wings and fly.

I’ll scream, he decided. I’ll scream to find relief.

Whenever he remained alone on the mountain or on the deserted plain at the hour of noon, what was it that he felt so abundantly-joy? bitterness? or was it, above everything else, fear? He always sensed God girding him about on all sides, and he would utter a wild cry, as though he wanted to make a desperate attempt to escape. Sometimes he crowed like a cock, sometimes he howled like a hungry jackal, sometimes like a dog being whipped. But as he opened his mouth now to cry out, his eye caught sight of the butterfly that was struggling to unfold its wings. He bent over, lifted it up gently and placed it high above the ground on a leaf of the fig tree, where the sun began to beat down upon it.

“My sister, my sister,” he murmured, and he looked at it with compassion.

Leaving the butterfly behind him to become warm, he set out once more and immediately heard the muffled tread of the two bare feet over the moist soil, a few paces in back of him. In the beginning, when he first left Nazareth, her sound was very faint: it seemed to come from far away. Little by little the feet had gained courage and drawn closer. Soon, the son of Mary thought with a shudder, they would catch him up. “Lord, O Lord,” he murmured, “grant that I may reach the monastery quickly, before she pounces on me.”

The sun now invaded the plain, beating down upon birds, beasts and men. A heterogeneous rumble mounted from the soil; on the mountainsides goats and sheep began to stir and shepherds to sound their pipes: the world grew tame and civilized. In a few moments, as soon as he reached that tall poplar ahead of him on his left, he would see Cana, the merry village he loved so much. While he was still a beardless stripling-before God dug his claws into him-how many times he and his mother had come here to the boisterous festivals! How many times he had joined the others in admiring the girls from all the surrounding villages as they danced beneath this tall, thickly foliaged poplar and the happy earth trembled under their stamping feet. But once, when he was twenty years old and stood gasping for breath under this poplar, holding a rose in his hand…

He shuddered. Suddenly he saw her of the thousand secret kisses standing once more before him. Hidden in her bosom were the sun and the moon, one to the right, the other to the left; and day and night rose and fell behind the transparent bodice of her dress.

“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” he cried. “I’ve been dedicated to God; I’m on my way to meet him in the desert!” Hurrying along, he passed the poplar. Suddenly Cana unfolded before him: the squat houses all anointed with whitewash, the square drying platforms, brilliantly gilded with the maize and huge gourds which had been spread out under the sun. The young girls, their bare feet dangling over the edges, were stringing red peppers along cotton thread, to decorate their homes.

Lowering his eyes, he rushed by this trap of Satan’s as fast as he could. He did not want to see anyone or to be seen by anyone. Behind him the two bare feet now stamped loudly over the cobbles: they were rushing too.

The sun had mounted; it now covered the earth. Singing merrily, the reapers swung their sickles and mowed. The handfuls quickly became armfuls, bundles, then stacks which towered above the threshing floors. As he proceeded, the son of Mary hastily wished the landowners a good harvest: “Each ear big enough to fill a sack!”

Cana had vanished behind the olive groves. The shadows snuggled close to the roots of the trees; it was almost noon. And as the son of Mary rejoiced in everything around him, keeping his mind fixed on God, the sweet smell of newly baked bread suddenly hit his nostrils. All at once he felt hungry, and the moment he did so, his entire body jumped for joy. How many years he had felt hunger and yet never experienced this holy yearning for bread! But now…

His nostrils sniffed the air. Following the aroma, he strode across a ditch, climbed a fence, entered a vineyard and discovered a squat but beneath a hollow olive tree. Smoke ascended, untwisting as it passed the thatched roof. An old lady was bent over, wrestling with a small brick oven which stood in the hut’s entranceway. She was quick-moving, had a nose like a skewer and eyes without eyelashes. At her side was a dog, black with yellow spots. He had placed his front paws on the oven and opened wide a deep, famished mouth filled with teeth. As soon as he heard footsteps in the vineyard he barked and charged the intruder. Surprised, the old woman turned. When she saw the youth her tiny eyes gleamed. Delighted to see a man enter her solitude, she stopped work, the wooden shovel in her hand.

“Welcome,” she said. “Hungry, Where have you come from, with God’s grace?”

“From Nazareth.”

“Hungry?” the old woman asked again, laughing. “Your nostrils are twitching like a greyhound’s.”

“Yes, I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

But the old lady was deaf and did not hear.

“What?” she said. “Speak louder.”

“I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive you-why? Hunger isn’t anything to be ashamed of, my fine lad, nor is thirst, nor love. They’re all God’s-so come closer and don’t be ashamed.”

She laughed again, revealing her one precious tooth.

“Here you’ll find bread and water. Love-farther on, in Magdala.”

She grasped a loaf which she had placed with the others on the stone bench next to the oven. “Look, this is the loaf we reserve for passers-by each time we empty the oven. We call it the grasshopper’s bread. It’s not mine; it’s yours. Cut a slice and eat.”

The son of Mary felt calmed. He sat down on the root of the ancient olive tree and began to eat. How tasty this bread was, how refreshing the water, how sweet the two olives which the old lady gave him to accompany his bread. They had slender pits and were as fat and fleshy as apples! He chewed tranquilly and ate, feeling that his body and soul had joined and become one now, that they were receiving the bread, olives and water with one mouth, rejoicing, the both of them, and being nourished.

The old lady leaned against the oven and admired him.

“You certainly were hungry,” she said with a laugh. “Eat. You’re young, you’ve got a long road ahead of you still, and no end of troubles. Eat, make yourself strong so that you’ll be able to endure.”

She broke off the corner of another loaf and gave him two more olives. Her kerchief slipped from her head, revealing her balding scalp. She hastily tied it up again.

“Where are you headed, with the grace of God?” she asked.

“To the desert.”

“Where? Speak louder!”

“To the desert.”

The old woman contorted her toothless mouth; her eyes grew fierce. “To the monastery?” she screamed with unexpected anger. “Why? What business do you have there? Don’t you pity your youth?”

He did not speak. The old woman shook her bald head and hissed like a snake. “You want to find God, do you?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” said the youth, his voice extremely thin.

The old lady kicked the dog, which was tangled up in her reed-like legs, and approached the youth.

“Ooo, unlucky devil,” she shouted, “don’t you know that God is found not in monasteries but in the homes of men! Wherever you find husband and wife, that’s where you find God; wherever children and petty cares and cooking and arguments and reconciliations, that’s where God is too. Don’t listen to those eunuchs. Sour grapes! Sour grapes! The God I’m telling you about, the domestic one, not the monastic: that’s the true God. He’s the one you should adore. Leave the other to those lazy, sterile idiots in the desert!”

The more the old lady spoke the more inflamed she became. She talked and screeched, had her fling of revenge, grew calm.

“Excuse me, my brave lad,” she said, touching the young man’s shoulder, “but once I had a son, a fine one like yourself. He went out of his mind one morning, opened the door and left to go to the monastery in the desert, to the Healers-a plague on them and may they never heal anyone as long as they live! Well, I lost him and now I fill the oven and empty it-to feed whom? My children? My grandchildren? I’m a withered, fruitless tree.”

She stopped for a moment to wipe her eyes, then began again. “For years I lifted my hands to God. Why was I born?’ I shouted.,I had one son; why did you take him from me?’ I shouted and shouted, but who could expect him to hear! Only once did I see the heavens open. It was at midnight, on the top of the prophet Elijah’s mountain. I heard a thunderous voice: ‘Shout yourself hoarse, for all I care.’ Then the heavens closed again; and that was the last I ever called to God.”

The son of Mary got up. He held out his hand to say goodbye to the old woman, but she drew hers back. Once more she began to hiss like a snake. “So it’s the desert, is it! You too have an appetite for sand, eh? But where are your eyes, my fine lad? Don’t you see vineyards, the sun, women? Go on, I tell you, go to Magdala-that’s where you belong! Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? God says, ‘I don’t want fasting and prayer, I want meat!’ In other words, he wants you to produce him children!”

“Farewell,” the young man said. “May God repay you for the bread you’ve fed me.”

“May God repay you too,” said the old lady, mollified; “may he repay you for the good you have done me. It’s been years since a man stopped at my broken-down hovel, and if anyone did pass by, he was always old…”

He strode back again through the vineyard, jumped over the fence and came out onto the main road.

“I can’t stand the sight of men,” he murmured. “I don’t want to see them; even the bread they give you is poison. Only one road leads to God: the one I chose today. It passes amidst men without touching them, and comes out in the desert. Oh, when will I arrive!”

His words had still not faded away when laughter broke out behind him. He turned, startled. A mouthless laugh convulsed the air, a hissing, rancorous, malevolent laugh.

“Adonai! Adonai!” was the shout which escaped his constricted larynx. His hair standing on end, he gazed at the guffawing air; then, in a raving frenzy, he started to run, and immediately heard the sound of the two bare feet which were running behind him.

“No matter where they are, they will catch me soon; no matter where they are, they will catch me soon,” he murmured, and ran.

The women were still mowing. The men carried the bundles to the threshing floors; others, farther on, had started to winnow. A warm breeze caught the chaff and sprinkled the earth with golden powder, leaving the heavy grain to pile up on the threshing floor. Passers-by took a fistful of wheat, kissed it and wished the landowners a similar harvest the following year.

Sitting between two hills in the distance, imposing, newly built, full of statues, theaters and painted women, was Tiberias, the idolatress. The sight of it filled the son of Mary with fright. Once, when he was still a child, he had come here with his uncle the rabbi, who had been called to rid a well-born Roman lady of her devils. It was obviously the devil of the bath which had mounted her, for she used to go out into the streets stark naked and waylay the passers-by. The rabbi and his nephew entered her palace at a time when the noble lady was again governed by her demon. She was running toward the street door, the slaves hot in her pursuit. The rabbi put out his staff and stopped her, but the moment she saw the boy, she pounced on him. The son of Mary screamed and fainted; and ever since then, whenever he recalled this shameless place, he trembled.

“This city is damned by God,” the rabbi used to tell him. “When you pass this way, go quickly, keep your eyes on the ground and your mind on death; or look up at the sky and keep your mind on God. If you want my blessing, whenever you travel to Capernaum, take another route.”

The hussy laughed now in the sunlight; people poured in and out of her gates, both on foot and on horseback; flags with the two-headed eagle waved over her towers; bronze arms flashed. Once the son of Mary had seen a mare’s carcass stretched out in a green bog outside Nazareth. It was puffed up, with the skin stretched tight, like a drum. Armies of crabs and dung beetles paraded in and out of its open belly, which was full of guts and filth; a cloud of immense gold-green horseflies buzzed in the air above, and two crows sucked away, their sharp bills thrust into the large eyes, just below the long lashes. The carcass was resplendent. Thickly inhabited, it seemed to have come back to life: you thought it was rolling delightedly in the springtime grass, completely content, with its four shod hoofs stretched out toward the sky.

“Such-like the mare’s carcass-such is Tiberias,” murmured the son of Mary, unable to remove his eyes from the glittering city. “Such, also, are Sodom and Gomorrah; such the sinful soul of man.

A vigorous, still-juicy old man went by astride his donkey. He saw Jesus and stopped.

“What are you gaping at, lad?” he asked. “Don’t you know her? She’s our new princess: Tiberias the whore. Greeks, Romans, Bedouins, Chaldeans, Gypsies and Jews mount her, and she’s always ready for more. She’s always ready for more-do you hear what I say? Two and two make four!”

He removed a handful of walnuts from his saddle bag and treated Jesus. “You look like a fine upstanding fellow,” he said, “and a poor one. Take these to munch along the road and don’t forget to say, God bless old Zebedee of Capernaum!”

His forked beard was fully white, his lips thick and gluttonous he had a short bull neck and black, quick-moving rapacious eyes. This squat fat body must have eaten, drunk and kissed amply in its time, and it was still far from satisfied!

A great hairy colossus came along. His shirt was open down the front, his knees bare; in his hand he held a hooked shepherd’s staff. He halted, all wrought up, and without greeting the old man, turned to the son of Mary. “Your Honor mightn’t be the son of the Carpenter, from Nazareth? You mightn’t be the one who builds crosses and crucifies us?”

Two old women who were mowing in the field opposite heard the conversation and approached.

“I…” said the son of Mary, “I…” and he started to leave.

“Where do you think you’re going?” shouted the colossus, seizing him by the arm. “You don’t get away so easily! Cross-maker, traitor-I’ll murder you!”

But the vigorous old man grabbed the crook and snatched it out of the shepherd’s hand.

“Wait a minute, Philip,” he said. “Listen to what an old man has to say. Now will you please answer me this: Everything that happens in this world is willed by God, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Zebedee, everything.”

“All right, then: it’s God’s will that this fellow build crosses. Leave him alone. And a word to the wise: it’s best not to meddle in the Lord’s affairs. Two and two make four.”

The son of Mary, meanwhile, had extricated himself from the bumpkin’s pincers and gone off at a run. The two old reapers screeched after him, shaking their sickles maniacally.

“Zebedee,” said the colossus, “let’s both go and wash our hands, because we touched the cross-maker; let’s go wash our mouths too, because we spoke to him.”

“Don’t worry about it,” said the old man. “Well, let’s not stand here. Come on, keep me company-I’m in a hurry. My sons are away. One went to Nazareth to see the crucifixion, or so he said, and it seems the other has gone to the desert to become a saint. So here I am all alone with my fishing boats! Come on, help me pull in the nets; they’re probably loaded with fish by now. I’ll give you a skilletful.”

They set out. The old man was in a merry mood. “Good Lord, just think what poor old God must go through also,” he said with a laugh. “He certainly got himself in hot water when he created the world. The fish screams, Don’t blind me, Lord; don’t let me enter the nets! The fisherman screams, Blind the fish, Lord; make him enter the nets! Which one is God supposed to listen to? Sometimes he listens to the fish, sometimes to the fisherman-and that’s the way the world goes round!”

The son of Mary, meanwhile, had gone along the steep goat’s path in order to avoid Magdala. He did not want to be soiled by this charming, openhearted, but wicked hamlet which lay amid date palms at the rich crossroads where caravans passed day and night, some from the Euphrates or the Arabian desert, headed for the Great Sea, others from Damascus or Phoenicia, headed for the tender green bed of the Nile. At the village’s entrance was a well of cool water, and on its brim sat a painted woman with naked breasts, smiling at the merchants. Oh, to flee, to change route, to cut straight for the lake and reach the desert! There, in a dried-up well, God was sitting, expecting him.

His heart swelled as he recalled God, and he quickened his pace. The sun finally took pity on the girls who were reaping: it began to set. The air grew cool. The mowers stretched out on their backs on the hay ricks in order to catch their breath and tell an off-color joke or two to relieve their minds. They had caught fire, working and sweating as they had all day long in the sun with exposed bosoms, next to the men who were sweating too. They had caught fire, and now, by means of jokes and laughter, they were cooling off.

The son of Mary overheard their laughter and teasing. He blushed. Impatient for the time when he would no longer hear human beings, he forced his thoughts elsewhere and began to turn over in his mind the words of Philip, the loud-mouthed shepherd.

“No one realizes how much I suffer,” he murmured with a sigh; “no one understands why I make crosses or with whom I am wrestling.”

In front of a cottage, two farmers were shaking the fine layer of chaff from their beards and hair, and washing themselves. They must have been brothers. Their old mother was laying out their poor-man’s dinner on the stone shelf beside the oven. Corn was roasting on the hot coals. The aroma filled the air.

The two farmers saw the son of Mary. He was exhausted and covered with dust, and they felt sorry for him.

“Hey you, where are you running to?” they shouted. “It looks like you’ve come quite a way, but you have no sack. Stop awhile and join us for a mouthful of bread.”

“And eat some corn too,” said the mother.

“And drink a bit of wine to put the color back in your cheeks.”

“I’m not hungry. I don’t want anything, thank you,” the son of Mary answered, continuing past them. Once they find out who I am, he was thinking, they’ll feel ashamed that they touched me and spoke to me.

“Three cheers for your pigheadedness,” one of the brothers called to him. “We aren’t good enough for you, eh?”

I’m the cross-maker, Jesus was about to reply, but he turned coward, bowed his head, and went on his way.

The evening descended like a sword. Before the hills had time to glow rosy red the soil turned purple and then straightway black, and the light, which had climbed to the tops of the trees, jumped into the sky and was lost. The darkness found the son of Mary at the summit of a hill. An aged cedar had taken root there. Though lashed by the winds and continually tormented, it held on strongly: its roots had eaten into the rock. The aroma of wheat and burned wood ascended from the plain, and from the scattered cottages rose the smoke of the evening meal.

The son of Mary was hungry and thirsty. For a split second he envied those laborers who finished their day’s work, returned dead tired and famished to their hovels, and saw from afar the lighted fire, the smoke rising and their wives preparing the dinner.

He suddenly felt more completely alone than even the foxes and owls, for they at least had a nest or lair and warm, beloved creatures awaiting them. He had no one, not even his mother. He squatted at the foot of the cedar and huddled up into a ball. He was shivering.

“Lord,” he murmured, “I thank you for everything; for the loneliness, the hunger, the cold. I lack nothing.”

As he said this, however, he seemed to sense the injustice which was being done him. He swept his eyes around him like a trapped beast, and his temples drummed with anger and fear. Getting up onto his knees, he riveted his eyes upon the dark path. The naked feet could still be heard. They were dislodging the stones and mounting. They reached the summit finally and then, involuntarily-he himself was startled to hear his own voice-the son of Mary cried out: “Come closer, my lady. Do not hide. It’s night now; no one sees you. Reveal yourself!”

He held his breath and waited.

Not a soul replied. Nothing but the eternal sounds of the night rising sweetly, peacefully, into the air: crickets and grasshoppers, goatsuckers sighing; and far in the distance, dogs that discovered in the darkness things invisible to men, and barked… He stretched his head forward. He was positive that someone stood under the cedar, directly before him.

“My lady… my lady,” he whispered now in a hushed, beseeching tone, trying to entice the invisible. He waited. He had stopped shivering. Sweat poured from his armpits and brow.

He stared, listening intently. At one moment he imagined he heard the laugh again, coming softly out of the darkness, at another that he saw the air whirl, congeal and become a body which was no sooner formed than unformed and lost.

Melting away with the effort, the son of Mary fought to tether the dark air. He did not cry out now, did not beseech; he simply knelt with outstretched head under the cedar and waited, melting away…

The rocks bruised his knees. He changed his position, leaning against the trunk of the cedar and closing his eyes. And then, without losing his tranquility or uttering a cry, he saw her-inside his eyes. But she had not come in the way he expected. He expected to see his bereaved mother with both her hands on his head, calling down her curse upon him. But now what was this! Trembling, he gradually opened his eyes. Flashing before him was the savage body of a woman covered head to foot with interlocking scales of thick bronze armor. But the head was not a human head; it was an eagle’s, with yellow eyes and a crooked beak which grasped a mouthful of flesh. She looked tranquilly, mercilessly, at the son of Mary.

“You did not come as I expected you,” he murmured. “You are not the Mother… Have pity and speak to me. Who are you?” He asked, waited, asked again. Nothing. Nothing but the yellow glitter of the round eyes in the darkness.

But suddenly the son of Mary understood.

“The Curse!” he cried, and he fell face downward onto the ground.