Thirst

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Tonight, there will be no miracle. There is no way I can shy away from what awaits me tomorrow. Not that I wouldn’t like to.

Just once, I misused the power of the husk. I was hungry, and the fruit on the fig tree was not ripe. My desire to bite into a fig—warm with sunshine, juicy and sweet—was so great that I cursed the tree, and condemned it to never again bear fruit. I said it was for a parable, not the most convincing.

How could I have been so unfair? It was not fig season. That was my only destructive miracle. In truth, on that day, I was ordinary. Frustrated by my greedy appetite, I allowed desire to turn to anger. And yet, appetite can be a very fine thing, provided it is kept intact. I needed only remind myself that in a month or two I would be able to satisfy it.

I am not without faults. There is an anger inside me that would like nothing better than to explode. There was the episode with the merchants at the Temple: at least my cause was a just one. From there to saying, “I came not to send peace, but a sword,” there’s still some leeway.

On the eve of my death, I have realized I am ashamed of nothing, except the fig tree. I really did take it out on an innocent creation. No point in moping in pointless regret, it simply bothers me that I cannot go and sit quietly next to the tree, embrace it, and ask its forgiveness. All it would have to do is forgive me, and its curse would end there and then, it would bear fruit once again, and be proud of the delicious weight on its branches.

I recall the orchard I walked through with the disciples. The apple trees were collapsing with the weight of the fruit, we gorged ourselves on those apples, the best we’d ever tasted—fragrant, crisp, and juicy. We stopped when we could eat no more, our bellies about to explode, and we fell to the ground, laughing at our gluttony.

“Look at all these apples we won’t be able to eat, that no one will eat!” said John. “It’s so sad!”

“Sad for who?” I asked.

“The trees.”

“Do you think so? Apple trees are happy to produce their apples, even if no one eats them.”

“How do you know?”

“Try being an apple tree.”

John was silent for a moment, and then he said:

“You’re right.”

“We’re the ones who feel sad—at the thought we can’t eat all the apples.”

Everyone burst out laughing.

I was a better man with the apple tree than with the fig tree. Why was that? Because I had satisfied my appetite. We are better people when we have had our pleasure, it’s as simple as that.

Alone in my cell, I feel as if I am that fig tree I cursed. It makes me sad, and so I do what everyone does: I try to move on to something else. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t work very well. Apple tree, fig tree—I wondered which tree Judas used to hang himself. They told me the branch broke. The tree must not have been very strong, because Judas didn’t weigh very much.

I always knew Judas would betray me. But, in keeping with the nature of my prescience, I didn’t know how he would go about it.

Our first encounter was particularly striking. I was in a village in the middle of nowhere where I understood no one. The longer I spoke, the more I could sense their hostility increasing, so much so that I began to see myself through their eyes, and I shared their consternation regarding this clown who had come to preach love to them.

In the crowd, there was this dark, skinny young man who oozed malaise from every pore. This is how he questioned me:

“You say we must love our neighbor—do you love me?”

“Of course.”

“That makes no sense. No one loves me. Why would you love me?”

“I don’t need a reason to love you.”

“Yeah, really. What a load of hogwash.”

People laughed in complicity with the young man. He seemed touched: this was visibly the first time he had garnered approval in his village.

And then I had the revelation of what was to come: this man would betray me, and my heart fell.

The gathering broke up. He alone still stood there before me.

“Would you like to join us?” I asked him.

“Who do you mean, us?”

I pointed to the disciples sitting on rocks off to one side.

“These are my friends,” I said.

“And who am I?”

“You’re my friend.”

“What makes you so sure?”

I realized that to answer would serve no purpose. There was something off about him.

I suppose we all have a friend like that: other people don’t understand the connection. The disciples had all taken to each other right from the start. But, for Judas, nothing seemed straightforward.

And he didn’t make things any easier. Whenever he felt that he was liked, he went and said the very thing it took to elicit rejection:

“Leave me alone, I’ve got nothing to do with you!”

This would be followed by endless discussions, where his ill will became patently clear.

“What makes you think you’re so different from us, Judas?”

“I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth.”

“And neither were most of us.”

“It’s just plain obvious I’m not like you, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean, like us? Simon and John, for example, have nothing in common.”

“Yes, they do: in Jesus’s presence they stand there gaping.”

“They don’t stand there gaping. They love and admire him, like we do.”

“I don’t. I like him, but I don’t admire him.”

“Then why are you following him?”

“Because he asked me to.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I’ve seen plenty of other prophets who are just as good.”

“He’s not a prophet.”

“Prophet, Messiah, it’s all the same.”

“Not at all. He is bringing love.”

“What is this love of his?”

With Judas, you always had to start from scratch. He was enough to discourage anybody, he discouraged me more than once. Loving him was nothing less than a challenge, and I loved him all the more for it. Not that I prefer difficult love, on the contrary, but because, with him, the additional effort was crucial.

If I had only spent time with the other disciples, I might have forgotten that it was for people like Judas that I had come: living problems, troublemakers, the ones Simon refers to as bloody pains in the neck.

“What is this love of his?” A good question. Night and day, you have to search within for this love. When you find it, it is so powerfully obvious, that you no longer understand why you found it so difficult to unearth it. But then you must stay in its never-ending flow. Love is energy and, therefore, movement. Nothing stagnates in it, the point is to throw yourself into its current without pausing to wonder how you will manage to hold on. It is not proof against plausibility.

When you’re in it, you see it. It’s not a metaphor: how many times have I been granted the possibility to see the ray of light that connects two human beings who love one another? When it is addressed to you, this light becomes less visible but more sensitive, you perceive its rays as they enter your skin—and there is no better feeling. If it were possible to hear it, you would make out the crackling of sparks.

Thomas only believes what he sees. Judas did not even believe what he saw. He said, “I don’t want to be misled by my senses.” When a platitude is heard for the first time, it causes a bit of a stir.

Judas is one of those figures who will generate the greatest amount of commentary in history. Is that any surprise, given the part he had to play? People will assert that he was the prototype of the traitor; such theories die hard. The amount of hot air created by this condemnation will lead, obviously, to its opposite. On the basis of an identical dearth of information, Judas will be proclaimed the most loving of disciples, the purest, the most innocent. The judgment of mankind is so predictable that I admire everyone for taking themselves so seriously.

Judas was a strange fellow. Something about him was impervious to any form of analysis. There was very little about him that was incarnate. To be more precise, he perceived only negative sensations. He would say, “I have a backache,” as if he had discovered a theorem.

If I said to him, “What a pleasant spring breeze,” he would reply, “Anyone could say that.”

“True enough, which makes it all the more delightful,” I insisted.

He would shrug, not wanting to waste his time replying to a simpleton.

In the beginning, all the disciples had trouble with him. Due to their kindness, they tried to comfort him. This made Judas very aggressive. Gradually, they realized it would be better not to talk to him too often. But also, not to ignore him: he was so touchy that he feared silence more than words.

Judas was an ongoing problem, primarily for himself. When there was no reason to get angry, he got angry. When there were only annoyances, he lost his temper. Consequently, it was preferable to be with him in moments of adversity; he fit in better. Until I met Judas, I didn’t know there were people that were perpetually offended. I don’t know if he was the first, but I do know he wasn’t the last.

We loved him. He realized this and tried to prove us wrong.

“I’m no angel, I have a foul character.”

“We’ve noticed,” one of us replied, with a smile.

“What? You’re a fine one to talk!”

When he wasn’t conducting his own imaginary trial, he labored at unraveling our affection.

He hated lying. When I brought the subject up, I noticed he could not really say what it was. For example, he was unable to differentiate between lies and secrets.

“Withholding some true information is not the same as lying,” I said to him.

“The moment you don’t tell the whole truth you are lying,” he replied.

He was like a dog with a bone. As I was getting nowhere with theory, I tried sophistry.

“A new law has decreed that hunchbacks will be sentenced to death. Your neighbor is afflicted with a hump, and the authorities ask you if you know any hunchbacks. You say no, of course. This is not a lie.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it’s a secret.”

If Judas had been more present in his own body, he would have possessed what he was lacking: subtlety. The body grasps what the mind fails to understand.

I have few memories of the time before incarnation. Things literally eluded me: what can you retain from things you can’t feel? There is no greater art than that of living. The best artists are those whose senses possess the greatest finesse. It is pointless to leave a trace elsewhere than in one’s own skin.

If one would just listen to it, one would realize that the body is always intelligent. In some distant future, it will be possible to measure people’s intellectual quotient. It will serve no purpose. Fortunately, it will never be possible to evaluate an individual’s degree of incarnation other than through intuition: their supreme value.

A source of trouble in all this will be people who are capable of leaving their body. If they only knew how easy it is, they wouldn’t have so much admiration for this prowess of theirs—at best useless, at worst, dangerous.

If a noble spirit leaves their body, it causes no harm. No doubt a journey can be found pleasant for the sole reason that it has not yet been taken. Similarly, walking down the street in the opposite direction from one’s usual daily route can be entertaining. Period. The problem is that mediocre minds will try to imitate this experience. My father would have done better to put incarnation under lock and key. Obviously, I can understand his concern for human freedom. But the result of the separation between a weak mind and its body will prove disastrous for that individual and for others.

An incarnate being never commits abominable acts. If he kills, it is in self-defense. He does not get carried away without a just cause. Evil always has its origin in the mind. Without the safeguard of the body, spiritual damage can begin.

At the same time, I understand. I too am afraid of suffering. We seek to become disincarnate in order to ensure ourselves of an emergency exit. Tomorrow, I won’t have one.