The Truth is Dead

JESUS WEPT Anthony McGowan

That sandal was really bugging Jesus. Part of him knew it was insane to get annoyed by a mere sandal, given the fact he was alone in the wilderness, with nothing to eat but locusts – not the juicy ones, mind, but dry desert locusts; he’d have got more goodness out of that blasted sandal – and nothing to drink but dew, lapped up off the bare rock where it formed in the morning.

And then there was that whole heavy thing about what he was supposed to be doing with the rest of his life. Going up to people and telling them to throw down their nets or whatever and leave their families and follow him, because he – and this was the part that really made him cringe – HE WAS THE SON OF GOD. What sort of job was that?

And beyond that, he knew there was something much, much worse. A time of necessary pain and death. He could have looked into the future more carefully and truly seen what was coming, but he denied himself that knowledge. It was cheating.

So perhaps that’s why he was obsessing over the sandal. Because all the other things he could think about were way more depressing than a broken strap and a sole that flapped like a loose sail in a storm on the Sea of Galilee.

Jesus poked at the strap. There was probably a special tool for fixing those things. A sandal spangler, or strap thribber, something like that. His father would have known. His father would have fixed the cursed object in five seconds flat. He’d have held it up to his eye, turned it round, figured out exactly what had to be done, and got those strong brown fingers of his working. Joseph had been good with stuff. Jesus the klutz, on the other hand, was always whacking his thumb with the hammer, or accidentally nailing his hand to a plank in the workshop.

A tear spilled from his eye, rolled down his nose and plopped into the sand at his feet as he thought about the old man, dying, worn out before his time.

And then a faint yet oddly penetrating voice reached Jesus through his thoughts.

“You, hey, wait.”

It was the first human voice he’d heard in all the forty days and forty nights of his desert fast.

He turned and gazed back down the rock-strewn slope. Squinting into the sun he saw a figure scrambling towards him. Sweat stung his eyes, and Jesus drew the dirty sleeve of his garment across his face. He thought about his mother, who had made the robe from a single piece of soft cloth, its seams so cunningly wrought as to be almost invisible.

“Hotter than hell here.”

The voice again. The man still toiled towards him. Even at this distance there was something bizarre about his appearance. His clothes were strange, following his contours in obscene dark unflowing detail. A Roman fashion? Or something from the East? Jesus blinked, and somehow – no doubt a trick played by fatigue, hunger, the relentless sun – the figure was there before him.

And what had appeared strange at a distance, now became bizarre, and frightening. And it wasn’t just the dark suit, or even the shining black patent leather shoes, or the unnatural white of the shirt, or the shimmering iridescent blue of the tie. For the man had no eyes. Or rather, where his eyes should have been were two mirrors fastened with a metal frame to the man’s face.

And in those mirrors Jesus saw himself. Saw the bones in his face where the flesh had shrunk, saw his own eyes deep in his skull, saw the hair filthy and matted. Saw, or thought he saw, a circle of thorns around his head and lines of blood like red tears.

“For a guy with a broken sandal, that’s some pace you set there. And while we’re on the subject, why don’t you let me get that for you?”

And on the feet of Jesus there were no longer the tattered worn sandals, but a soft enclosing mesh of some unknown white material, and an undulating sole that held his foot as gently as a cloud.

Jesus closed his eyes, knowing that in his delirium the time of temptation had come. He kicked off the outlandish shoes and sent them skittering away down the slope, where they turned to stones.

“Nike no good? You want Puma? Adidas?”

Jesus ignored him. In bare feet now, he continued to walk up the mountain, relieved, almost, that it had begun.

“OK, so you got me,” said the man, his short legs scuttling to keep up with the steady tread of Jesus. “No one ever said you weren’t smart. Look, it’s too hot for all this tearing about on mountains. It ain’t like we’re a couple of kids. Let’s sit down and talk about it in a civilized way. You know I’ve got to do this, so we may as well get it over with as soon and as painlessly as possible. Just give me ten minutes to hit you with my spiel, then you can tell me to get stuffed and we can get on with the rest of our… well, with the other things we have to do. You’re a busy guy; I’m a busy guy. Busy busy busy. The stuff I’ve got on, you wouldn’t believe. War, crime, murder – one damn thing after another.”

And Jesus felt suddenly the great sadness of everything, like the weight of death on his shoulders, and he wanted more than anything to sit and rest.

“Look, here’s good,” said the man, showing with his hand a flat rock. He pulled a red spotted handkerchief from his sleeve and dusted the rock. Then he sat and patted the space beside him, and Jesus sat also.

“Heck of a view,” the man said. “You can see clear to…” He waved vaguely, and Jesus saw his nails, perfect and clean and sharp. “Well, over there.”

The sun was lower in the sky and the desert was burning red. Shadows like long knives crawled over the land.

Then Jesus noticed that the bare rock on which he had sat was now black leather. He sank deeply into the softness. He tried to struggle up, but his weariness was too great, and the delicious enveloping comfort too welcoming. He thought that no one, not even Herod in his palace or Caesar in Rome, had ever known a seat like this.

“That’s more like it,” the man said. “OK, look, like with any deal, any contract, there’s two sides to this. There’s what I have to offer, and what I want in return. I’m guessing there’s no point in me dangling all the usual stuff before you: the riches, the power, the kingdoms? But they’re on the table if you want them. I’m not saying you should take them for the kicks you’ll get, but, well, you know a guy like you with real power could do a lot of good. I mean, who would you rather have in charge of an empire, you or Caligula? Or, thinking ahead a little, my boys Genghis, Tamburlaine and Adolf? Irresponsible not to have a go, when you think about it. Like they say, all that’s necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing, and you’re just sitting there kinda doing nothing, bud. Well…?

“No, fine, didn’t think you’d bite on that one. Temporal power not your thing. I get it. Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, blah blah blah. So, maybe a bit of the other. Man, you should see the babes I could fix you up with. Built like goddesses. Hey, some of them are goddesses! And I don’t just mean the chicks around now; I’m talking about every beauty that has ever lived or will ever live.

“No? Not girls. Boys, maybe? OK, keep your hair on. Don’t get your knickers in a twist; I was just asking. Live and let live, I say. Still nyet? Well, that’s what I reckoned. But you know how it is. I had to ask. If I didn’t follow the script, there’d be hell to pay.”

Through all this Jesus had remained impassive. Resisting temptation was his job, just as the role of the Father of Lies was to tempt.

“But that’s not all I’ve got here,” the man continued. “And we’re going multimedia with this one.”

He drew a rectangle with his finger in the air, and where he drew, a dark shape appeared, like a window into emptiness.

“I want you to watch this. Because the thing is, I know you’re a good guy. Hey, one of the best. No, the best. Your heart’s in the right place. No arguments there. You want things to work out well. You want the little people to be OK. I’ve read the book. Love thy neighbour, turn the other cheek, blessed are the cheesemakers, all that stuff. Who’s gonna argue with that? If you were thinking of starting up a religion, then that’s exactly the sort of material you’d want in there. But, well, the best-laid plans of mice and men, and… No, look, let’s just watch the movie. A picture’s worth a thousand words. Let me wind this on to the right place… yeah, here we go.”

Images appeared on the floating screen. There was music. There were voices. To Jesus it was all meaningless. Except that he could make out scenes of horror. Blood. The only meaning was blood. He closed his eyes.

“Oh, crap, I should have known you’d be a bit freaked by the technology. So why don’t I just talk you through what’s happening here? You know, like the extras on a DVD, when the director gives you his commentary. Except you don’t know. Anyway, with what I’m saying, and what you can see, you’ll get it. Get it? Cool.”

Jesus opened his eyes. The sun was below the horizon and the yellows and reds of the desert were turning grey and blue. It was a beautiful time. Cooler now than the terrible heat of the day, but warmer than the wretched cold of the desert night. He had tried to light fires, but that was not his skill, and so he had shivered and moaned like a fanatic through the cold black hours.

“Right, here we go. Your people, the people you pick, good men mostly. Except Ju— Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. But things start going pear-shaped pretty soon after you quit the scene. First your guys go and upset the Romans – and believe me, that’s never a good idea. Hang on, let me…”

He fished down the side of the leather sofa until he hit on the remote control, but not before he’d also found – and discarded in frustration – a number of coins, a box of matches, a hairbrush and a fluff-covered object that might once have been a gummy bear.

“Right, let’s fast-forward until… here you go.”

The screen showed a Roman amphitheatre. A family – a mother and a father, a boy and a girl – kneeling in the sand. A lioness, hungry, wary, circled them. The parents prayed. The children hid their faces in the folds of their father’s garment. The lioness made her lunge, and carried away the small girl by the throat.

“Let’s pause there, shall we? There’s lots more of that sort of thing – thousands of these guys getting chomped or speared or burnt. And I know exactly what you’re gonna say. This is the Romans’ doing. Can’t blame the victims, can you? But you see, the thing is, these people – the men, the women, the little ones – they’re only there because of good old Jesus H. Christ. Now, I don’t know about you, but that’s not something I’d like on my conscience. I mean, just how many kids being eaten like that would it take for this whole enterprise you’re planning to start looking, well, counter-productive, eh?

“But let’s move on. Because, you see, it isn’t long before your guys start dishing it out as well as taking it. In fact, they pretty soon begin to dish out a lot more than they take. Dish it out in spades. I’m giving you one case here, to begin with. Check out this lady. Hypatia, they call her.”

The screen showed a serene woman reading from a papyrus scroll.

“This is one clever lady, the most important philosopher of her time. Lives in a town called Alexandria, just when the Christians – that’s what your followers start calling themselves – are taking over as top dog. But she still has a soft spot for the old ways: Zeus, Athena, Apollo, that crowd. So along come a rabble of monks and zealots and fanatics and they do this…”

The image switched to show a mob attacking Hypatia, their faces contorted with rage and hatred. They tore her from her carriage, and as she pleaded for her life they sliced away her flesh with oyster shells, and then, her lips still moving, they burned what was left.

“Tut, and I say again, tut. And all because she liked to offer up a little incense to the wrong gods. But things really heat up from here. Let me zip through this.”

And there were more scenes of horror and persecution and war, each more terrible than the last. Christian armies converted pagans by the sword. Crusaders in clanking armour pillaged, raped and torched their way through the Jerusalem they had come to redeem. The great cities of Muslim Spain were left desolate. Everywhere: blood, fire and the burnt-out death of fire, and the bodies of children, and the cries of carrion birds circling.

“And the Jews, the Jews. You should see what they do to the Jews. Two thousand years of persecution. What kind of legacy is that for a nice Jewish boy like you?”

Jesus bowed his head and mumbled a prayer.

“But this is only the beginning. The really good stuff isn’t done by your guys to the other lot, pagans, unbelievers, whatever. No, the fun really gets going when the Christians start tearing each other apart. You know this as well as I do – real hatred is between brothers.”

More pictures of war followed. Massacres of Catholics by Protestants; of Protestants by Catholics.

The eyes of Jesus burned but he could not look away.

“I reckon we’ve seen enough of that, don’t you? Now there’s just one last thing I want to show you.”

The blank window filled with an image of the night, or so it first appeared. Millions of tiny lights glittered against a blue-black sky. And then the camera began to zoom in. The millions became thousands, and the thousands became hundreds. The dots of light took on a troubling complexity until just a few filled the screen. They were not stars, not these, and Jesus felt his stomach knot in revulsion.

“We’ve got a smell function here, if I can find the right button.” The nail tapping at the remote was now oddly hooked and thick and grimy.

A smell drifted through the desert. The smell of scorching fat and the acrid stink of burning hair.

And now just one figure, wreathed in flames, was visible. The woman’s rags had burnt away, and her skin was blackened and her face was in a place beyond pain. No, not beyond pain, but at the furthest reaches of pain, and the only place beyond it is death.

“Popcorn?”

The man held out a bucket. Jesus knocked it from his hand, scattering the popcorn over the ground, where it turned again to pebbles and grit. For a second, the cheerful, inquisitive, businesslike face of the figure changed, and not even the mirrors fastened to the man’s face could conceal the red fire in his eyes. And then the fire was hidden again.

“Yeah, sure, you got upset,” he said. “Only to be expected. Who’s the woman? You wanna know who she is? Does it matter? Pagan, heretic, witch, who cares? My point is, she’s burning – hell, they’re all burning – because of you. Because of what you teach. Because of what it makes men do. But you can stop it. Just walk away. Give it all the finger. The disciples, the water into wine shtick, the lepers, the woman who washes your feet with her hair, the guy you bring back from the dead, the scourging, the crown of thorns, the death on the tree, the whole lot. Say the word and it’s gone. Quite literally never happens. And when that goes, everything else goes too. No persecutions, no crusades, no burning babes like this one here. We’re all laughing.”

Jesus stared into the desert and saw an unexpected last brilliant flaming of red ochre before the darkness came.

“Let’s get it on paper, shall we? Not that I wouldn’t take your word, but it’s good to have these things on file. No need to read the small print; it’s just the usual stuff for the lawyers – you know what they’re like. Just sign here. In blood. No, only kidding. It’s not like we’re a couple of spindly goths hanging round a graveyard in Sheffield. Ink’s fine. Use this. Just click on the top there and it… you got it. Thaaaaat’s great. OK, OK. Give you a lift back into town? No? Suit yourself.”

And then Satan was gone, leaving Jesus alone on the bleak mountainside with the darkness upon him. And the screen was just the stars in the night sky, and the soft seat was a flat rock.

And Jesus thought about the smile on the face of Satan as he left and the truth came to him at last, and he allowed himself a glimpse of the future as it now stood. He saw what would become of the world. Saw that the evil was now greater. Saw that what had been small points of flame was now one great conflagration.

And then, not knowing whether to go up to the mountain top, where still a little light might be found, or down into the endless black of the valley, he cast himself onto the stony ground.

And Jesus wept.