‘Where’s the harm in that?’ she says, gripping my wrist with her free hand. ‘You’re a gentleman, aren’t you? I wasn’t doing anything but sending you early to Heaven.’
‘How do you know you’d be sending me to Heaven?’ I say. As I say it she twists suddenly and, still gripping my wrist, bends smoothly and throws me over her shoulder to the ground.
I land heavily on my back but I bring her down with me and in the struggle that follows I end up sitting on top of her. She’s a well-built woman and I think longingly of times that will never come again. ‘Why are we fighting?’ she says. ‘We’re all God’s children, aren’t we? We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ.’
‘Not me,’ I say. ‘I’m a Jew.’
‘So was Christ,’ she says. ‘It makes nothing. Are you just going to sit there, aren’t you going to have me?’
‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m a eunuch.’
‘Yet God be thanked!’ she says.
‘For what?’ I say.
‘That they didn’t cut out your tongue as well!’ she says.
Thus, in our little dark wood in our tiny bit of background on the night side of the picture.
The night is far gone when she takes me to a little hut deep in the wood and well off the travelled path. Hanging from a tripod over the embers of a fire is the head of the tax-collector, somewhat shrivelled and smoke-darkened. ‘God in Heaven!’ I say.
‘Pontius Pilate,’ she says. ‘He’s not quite done but he’ll certainly fetch twenty pieces of gold when he’s ready. You won’t get a Pilate like that anywhere for less than fifty; a Pilate like that will make any church rich, it’s really unusual.’
‘Why Pilate?’ I say.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘That’s just how it is. When I saw him I said, “Pontius Pilate”.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but why would a church want the head of Pontius Pilate?’
‘How could they not want him?’ she says. ‘What kind of relics have they got? They’ve got Christ’s foreskin and Mary’s afterbirth and three hairs from Joseph’s arse but what about the man who made Christianity possible? What if Pilate hadn’t washed his hands? What if he’d turned Jesus loose and let him go on preaching, what then, hey?’
I ponder this.
‘Why were you coming through this wood?’ she says.
‘I’m going to Jerusalem,’ I say, suddenly remembering that I’m in a hurry.
‘What for?’ she says.
‘To keep Jesus from going away,’ I say.
‘He’s already gone,’ she says. ‘If Jesus had stayed buried in Jerusalem he’d have been divided up amongst all the churches in Christendom by now. You must know he was resurrected even if you are a Jew.’
‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen him.’
‘Did you get any relics of him?’ she says.
‘I’m not joking,’ I say.‘I really saw him.’
‘How?’ she says. ‘Had you a vision?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘ wasn’t quite myself at the time. I was leaning on him, he was holding me up.’
‘Did he have a smell?’ she says.
I put my mind back to when I was with Jesus. ‘He smells of stone and sweat and fire,’ I say.
‘Then Jesus he wasn’t,’ she says. ‘Jesus wouldn’t have a smell, that’s how you’d know him.’
‘Everybody has some kind of a smell,’ I say.
‘Well I know it,’ she says. ‘That’s just why Jesus would be different; he’s the Son of God, isn’t he? Do you think things came out of him like out of ordinary people when he was on earth? Do you think he made turds?’
I say, ‘Well, he ate and he drank and he bled so I suppose he must have done the rest of it as well the same as anyone else.’
‘There you show your heathen ignorance, thou child of darkness,’ she says. ‘If Jesus had made turds they’d never have corrupted like ordinary ones and they’d be in little golden jewelled caskets in churches.’
This also I ponder.
‘Maybe I should come with you,’ she says. ‘It isn’t safe to travel alone these days.’
I look at her. She’s not at all a bad-looking woman, she’s certainly strong enough to be a helpful companion on the road and she’s good company as well. It’s true that she’s a murderess but in these times that’s perfectly acceptable to me as long as she’s murdering for me and not against me.
‘You owe me something, you know,’ she says. ‘After all, it was you that widowed me.’
‘And it was you that almost made me a relic,’ I say. I want her to come with me but it would be a kind of holding on; my pilgrimage requires to be a solitary journey; it is a private matter between Jesus and me and the tax-collector. ‘I can’t take you with me,’ I say, ‘I’ve made a vow.’
‘Of what?’ she says. ‘Chastity?’
‘A vow to go alone,’ I say. ‘You won’t be without a man long, a woman like you. You can find yourself a real man instead of a eunuch.’
‘Give me that ring on your finger then,’ she says. ‘For remembrance.’
I look at my hand. There it is, the tax-collector’s wedding ring. I put it on her finger.
‘If you had your proper parts you’d have taken me,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to do without me once you’d had me.’
When she says that it comes to me suddenly that if I had my proper parts I’d not be in this wood, I’d not be on this pilgrimage. If I’d been more careful about what streets I walked in I might still be climbing that ladder while the tax-collector completed his metamorphosis into Pontius Pilate. It occurs to me then that it might have been my castration as much as anything else that started him on his penitential pilgrimage.
The poor maggoty stump of his corpse is still lying on the ground by the lightning-blasted tree while his head hangs from the tripod in the hut. That the head is either assuming or re-assuming the identity of Pontius Pilate seems to me a destiny that is not for me to interfere with. To the body, however, I surely owe a burial.
‘Why was he hung up like that?’ I say.
‘I don’t know,’ says the woman. ‘Udo did that, the one you killed. He didn’t like the look of him.’
The woman has of course a shovel among the tools and implements of her trade and with it I dig the grave. We put the body into the grave and I hear the words of the Kaddish coming out of my mouth, I see the black Hebrew letters rising in the morning air: ‘Yisgaddal v’yiskadash sh’may rabbo … Magnified and sanctified be his great name ’
Hearing the words, seeing the black letters rising in the air, I find myself paying attention to what I am saying, paying attention to the first words of the prayer:
Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world which he hath created according to his will.
As I say these words I am looking at a spider’s web pearled with the morning dew; the morning sunlight shining through it illuminates every droplet and every strand of the web; the spider, like an initial letter, witnesses the prayer and the fresh morning darkness of the oak leaves above it. My partnership with the tax-collector makes continual astonishment in me: it seems to me that never before have I noticed how much detail there is in the world which he hath created according to his will. That this headless stump with the absent face of Pontius Pilate should lie writhing with maggots under the freshly turned earth while each perfectly-formed drop of dew shines on the purposeful strands of the spider’s web and the spider itself is a percipient witness and the oak leaves tremble in awareness of the morning air — all this is as the hand of God upon my eyes even though I know that God will never again limit its manifestation to any such thing as might have a hand to lay upon my eyes.