Thirst

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They have come for me at last.

I give a sigh of relief. The worst is behind me. It’s no longer just a matter of waiting for the ordeal.

I am quickly disillusioned. Now the show has begun. They’ve placed a crown of thorns on my head, pressing it down to make my scalp bleed. I’m sorry to say that ridicule does not kill.

I am publicly flogged. I cannot see the point of this spectacle. You could swear it’s some sort of appetizer. Before the main course, the crucifixion, there’s nothing like a little flogging to whet the appetite. Every crack of the whip leaves me stiff with pain. The kindly voice in my head repeats that I must accept. Just behind it, a grating voice resounds, “The fun and games have only just begun.” I stifle a nervous laugh which might be taken for insolence. It’s a pity I’m not supposed to be impertinent, that would amuse me.

I refuse to dwell on the fact that the whip is tearing me apart with pain: what lies ahead will be even more painful. And to think it’s actually possible to suffer even more than this!

There are some spectators, but not that many. This is for the happy few: they’ve been hand-picked, connoisseurs who can appreciate what they’re seeing. They seem to find the cast first-rate: the torturer excels at his flogging, the victim is modest, a most tasteful performance. Thank you, Pontius Pilate, your receptions continue to live up to their reputation. If you don’t mind, we won’t stay for the next round of festivities, which is bound to be more vulgar.

A blazing sun greets me outside. Did they flog me for that long? The morning has gone by. My eyes take several minutes to adjust to the glare. Suddenly, I see the crowd. Now there really is a crush. There are so many people you can hardly tell them apart. They share a single, avid gaze. They don’t want to lose a single crumb of the spectacle.

Not a trace of the night’s cool rain lingers in the air. The ground, however, still attests to its passage: it’s as muddy as it gets. I stare at the cross leaning against the wall. I mentally calculate its weight. Will I be able to carry it? Will I manage?

Absurd questions: I have no choice. Whether I’m able to or not, I’ll have to do it.

They bring the cross to me. It’s so heavy I could collapse. I am staggered. There’s no way around it. How will I manage?

To walk as quickly as possible: that’s the only way. Fat chance: my legs are like jelly. Every step requires an unthinkable effort. I work out the distance to Mount Calvary. It’s impossible. I’ll die long before I get there. It’s almost good news, I won’t be crucified.

And yet, I know I will be. I really will have to hold out. Come on, don’t think about it, there’s no point, keep going. If only I weren’t sinking into the mud, which makes the cross twice as heavy!

It doesn’t help matters when people start pushing toward me as I go by. I hear the most extraordinary comments:

“Not acting so clever, now, are we?”

“If you are a magician, why don’t you get yourself out of this?”

The positive side is that I don’t have it in me to despise them. I don’t think about it. All my energy has been requisitioned for my burden.

Don’t fall. It’s forbidden. Moreover, if you fall, you’ll have to get back up. It will be worse. Yes, there are ways for it to be worse. Don’t fall, I beg of you.

I feel like I’m about to fall. It’s a matter of seconds. There’s nothing I can do, there are limits, and I’m reaching them. There, I have fallen. The cross has knocked me down, I’ve got my nose in the mud. At least this gives me a few seconds of deliverance. I savor this strange freedom; I enjoy the pleasure of my weakness. Naturally, the blows instantly rain down on me, I practically don’t feel them, since it hurts all over.

Off we go, once again, I lift up the monstrous weight. I’m on my feet again, staggering, and now I know the cost. Matthew, 11:30, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Not for me, my friends. The word of God is not addressed to me, here. But that I knew. To experience it is different. My entire being protests. What enables me to go on is that voice I identify with the husk, and which murmurs, constantly, “Accept it.”

I thought I had touched bottom, but there stands my mother. No. Don’t look at me, please. Alas, I see that you see, and that you understand. Your eyes are wide with horror. It’s beyond pity, you are living through what I am living through, only worse, because it’s always worse when it’s your own child. It’s against nature to die before your own mother. If on top of it she is present during my torture, there can be nothing more cruel.

This is not a final, beautiful moment, it is the ugliest of moments. I don’t have the strength to tell her to go away, and even if I did, she wouldn’t listen. My dear mother, I love you, don’t watch your son suffering like a dog, look away from what I am enduring. If only you could faint, mother!

My father, who never answers my prayers, has strange ways of showing me—how to put it—not his solidarity, let alone his compassion, so under the circumstances, I see no other word for it than this: his existence. The Romans are beginning to realize that I will not make it alive to Mount Calvary. For them, this would be a bitter defeat: what’s the point of crucifying a dead man? So, they have stopped a man on his way back from his fields, a cocky fellow who happened to be passing by.

“You’ve been requisitioned. Help this condemned man to carry his burden.”

Even though he has received an order, the man is a miracle. He doesn’t give it a second thought, he sees a stranger staggering under a burden that is too heavy for him, and, without further ado, he helps me.

He helps me!

All my life, this has never happened. I didn’t know what it was like. Someone is helping me. Never mind why.

I could weep. In that abject species that doesn’t give a damn about me and for whom I’m sacrificing myself, there is this man who hasn’t come to enjoy the show, and who, I can tell, is helping me with all the goodness of his heart.

If he’d just shown up on the street by chance and seen me staggering under the cross, I think he would have reacted in exactly the same way: not pausing to think for even a second, he would have run up to help. There are people like that. They don’t know how rare they are. If we asked Simon of Cyrene why he behaves this way, he wouldn’t understand the question: he doesn’t know that you can be any other way.

My father created a strange species: they’re either bastards with opinions, or generous souls who do not think. In the state I’m in, I’m not thinking, either. I’ve discovered that I have a friend in Simon: I’ve always loved strong, sturdy people. They’re never the ones who cause a problem. It suddenly feels as if the cross doesn’t weigh a thing.

“Let me carry my share,” I tell him.

“Honestly, it’s easier if you let me do it,” he replies.

I don’t mind. But the Romans aren’t having it. Simon is a good sort, and he tries to explain his point of view:

“This cross isn’t heavy. If anything, the condemned man is getting in my way.”

“The condemned man has to carry his burden,” a soldier shouts.

“I don’t understand. Do you want me to help him, or don’t you?”

“You’re a pain in the ass. Get the hell out!”

Sheepish, Simon looks at me as if to imply he’s put his foot in it. I smile at him. It was too good to be true.

“Thank you,” I say.

“Thank you,” he says, oddly.

He looks almost upset.

There’s no time for a proper farewell. I have to keep moving ahead, dragging this dead weight. And I’ve noticed something I could not have predicted: the cross is not as heavy now. It is still horrific, but the episode with Simon has changed things. It’s as if my friend took away with him the most inhuman part of my burden.

This miracle—because it is a miracle—has nothing to do with me. Find me a more extraordinary form of magic in the Scriptures. You will seek in vain.

It’s unbearably hot. My eyebrows are no longer doing their job, the sweat on my brow is trickling into my eyes, I can’t see where I’m going. The Romans guide me with the crack of their whips; it’s as brutal as it is ineffective. I didn’t know it was possible to sweat this much. How can there be so much water and salt in me?

And suddenly, a cloth sets me free: a piece of fabric as soft as it is delightful passes over my face in a silky caress. Who can be making such a gesture? Someone as kind as Simon of Cyrene, but that tall beanpole would not be able to wipe my face so delicately.

I don’t want it to stop, and, at the same time, I’d like to know who this kindly soul is. The cloth is withdrawn, and I find myself looking at the loveliest woman on earth. She seems as stunned as I am.

The instant is frozen, time is suspended, I no longer know who I am or what I am doing here, none of it matters, there are these big, pure eyes looking at me, I have no more past or future, the world is perfect, let nothing move, we are in the imminence of the ineffable. This is what they mean by love at first sight, something colossal is about to happen, some highbrow music is missing from our desire, but this time we shall hear it at last.

“My name is Veronica,” she says.

It’s amazing how beautiful the voice of an unknown woman can be.

The crack of the whip brings me back to reality. Once again, the cross is crushing me, I drag myself forward, I’m back in hell.

Still, since the moment this torture began, fate has been hounding me, everything has come tumbling down on me, best and worst, I have found friendship, I have found love, I can scarcely get over it. Veronica—who could she be?—the music of her voice still echoing in my ears, and I have discovered that a melody can lighten the world, and a bright face can give you the strength to carry the instrument of your own torture.

On this planet, there are the likes of Simon of Cyrene and Veronica. Two incomparable examples of sublime courage.

I have returned to my century. I am struggling. Where will I find the energy not to collapse again? Some part of my brain is envisioning the moment of the accident. My eyes can see the place where it will happen. I bargain with myself, “Just one more step… just another half a step…”

Falling is an illusion of repose. And still, I savor this second fall. It feels so good to surrender to the law of gravity. A hail of lashes falls upon me at once, the sweet sensation lasts only a second, but in the state I’m in, every second counts.

It feels as if I have been carrying, dragging this cross for hours. That can’t be right. I’m finding it hard to recall my former life. Since I embarked on the way to Calvary, I’ve been dazzled first by a man, then by a woman. I saw my mother again, too. It has often been said that I liked women better. To prefer one sex over the other would, in my opinion, be a sign of disregard.

The daughters of Jerusalem crowd around me, weeping. I try to get them to dry their tears:

“Come now, it’s just a bad spell to get through, it will all work out.”

I don’t believe a word I’m saying. It won’t work out, it will only get worse. It’s just that their sobs won’t let me breathe. How can we help someone? Certainly not by crying in front of them. Simon helped me, Veronica helped me. Neither one of them was crying. Nor did they have grins on their faces: they were taking concrete steps.

No, I do not prefer women. I think they protect me. I cannot attribute that to anything other than the sweetness of my behavior toward them, which is not normal practice among men in these parts.

Need I point out that I do not prefer men, either? There are certain verbs I avoid, such as prefer, or replace—people have no idea how alike these verbs are. I’ve seen people fight in order to be preferred, never realizing that this merely makes them replaceable.

One day, people will claim that no one is irreplaceable. That is the contrary of my message. The love that consumes me asserts that every individual is irreplaceable. It is appalling to know in advance that my ordeal is serving no purpose.

That’s not altogether true. A few individuals will understand. I cannot rule out the fact that they won’t need my sacrifice for that. I’ll never know. Better not to let it fill me with bitterness, which would only make my fate even more terrible.

Strange thoughts come to you when you are dragging a cross along like this. It’s an exaggeration to call them thoughts, they are merely snatches, short-circuits. What I am carrying is far too heavy for me. I have never felt so wretched.

It’s a pity I did not know this sooner: to carry only a light burden is sufficient as an ideal in life. An incredible lesson which will be of no use to me. I recall spending entire days on the road, congratulating myself on my happiness over nothing. I wasn’t happy over nothing. I was savoring lightness.

I have collapsed for the third time. Biting the dust has acquired its full meaning. The ground isn’t muddy now, the sun has dried the earth. I can see the top of Mount Calvary. Why am I in a hurry to get there? I find it hard to believe I’ll suffer any more on the cross than under it, as I do now.

It’s a common experience: when you climb a mountain, first you look at it from below, where it doesn’t seem so high. You have to get to the top to realize just how high it is. Calvary is just a little mound, but it feels as if this climbing will never end.

I don’t know how I managed to get back to my feet. As things stand, everything is an effort, I’m aching all over. I must be solid, since I haven’t passed out. The last steps are the worst, I cannot feel the joy of having overcome an ordeal, I know that what is about to begin here is of another nature altogether.

They waste no time proving this to me in the simplest way: they stripped off my clothing. It was only a robe of linen and a belt: now I appreciate just what those rags were worth.

As long as you are dressed, you are someone. Now I’m no one. I’m nothing at all anymore. A little voice in my head whispers, “They left you your loincloth. It could be worse.” The entire human condition can be summed up like that: it could be worse.

I don’t dare look at the two men who are already on their crosses. I will spare them the pain of being stared at, something I have just experienced myself at length.

One of the two sneers at me, “If you are the son of God, ask your father to get you out of this.”

I sincerely admire the fact that, in his situation, he hasn’t lost his sarcastic wit.

I hear the other one saying, “Quiet, he deserves this less than we do.”

He’s suffering to this degree and is still eager to defend me—I am touched. I thank the man.

No, I didn’t tell him that he was saved. To say such a thing to someone who is going through such an ordeal would be playing games. And to tell one of the crucified men, “You are saved,” and not the other would have been the height of pettiness and cynicism.

I’m pointing out these issues because this is not what will be written in the Gospels. Why not? I don’t know. The evangelists were nowhere near me when this happened. And regardless of what people have said, they didn’t know me. I’m not angry with them, but nothing is more irritating than those people who, under the pretext that they love you, claim that they know you inside out.

In truth, I felt the pull of fraternal love toward those two crucified men for the simple reason that I was about to share their ordeal. Someday someone will come up with the expression “affirmative action” to suggest what might have been my attitude toward the man we will call the good thief. I have no opinion on the matter, I just know the two men moved me, each in his own way. For while I loved what the good thief said to me, I also loved the pride of the bad one—who wasn’t actually bad. I don’t see what’s so bad about stealing a loaf of bread, and I can understand why someone might not feel remorse in such a situation.