Rome with a Jewish governor! Maybe it’s Jairus, the father of that Eleazar who on another time-line commanded the Sicarii against the Romans at Masada. But on this time-line Masada won’t be happening, and in A.D. 30 Jairus is Governor of Rome. So they bring before him this fellow Jesus, he’s a wandering preacher from Arezzo or some place up in the hills. He’s been getting the people all stirred up with his teaching and his miracles, he’s been worrying senators and priests and officialdom in general, they don’t know what he might bring down on their heads and they think it would be much better for everybody if he could simply be got out of the way. Mind you, he’s no Jew, this Jesus; he’s an uncircumcised Italian, he’s one of theirs but they want no part of him, he’s too dangerous. When Jairus says to them, ‘What then may I do to Jesus called Christ?’ the assembled senators, officials, priests, and hangers-on all say, ‘Let him be crucified.’ Jairus is willing to let the Romans sort things out in their own way. He washes his hands before the crowd, he says, ‘Innocent am I from the blood of this man; ye will see to it.’ And the assembled Romans say, ‘On his own head let the blood of him be.’ I listen and I listen but no one says, ‘The blood of him on us and on the children of us.’
The Jewish legionaries scourge this Italian Jesus and they nail him to a cross on the Capitoline Hill. After his death I mingle with the crowd, I listen to what they are saying.
‘Lousy Christ-killers!’ says the man next to me.
‘Who?’ I say.
‘Who?’ says the man. ‘Those murdering Jews! Who else?’
‘I thought perhaps you meant the Romans who told the Jews to do it,’ I say.
‘Never mind that,’ he says. ‘Who’s governing Rome? Who put Jesus on the cross, eh? Who drove in the nails? It was those lousy Christ-killers, it was those murdering Jews.’
I turn to others in the crowd. ‘Those lousy Jews!’ is what they all say. ‘Those Christ-killers!’
Here I leave the Italian Jesus; I don’t know whether or not he rose up and made further appearances.
Night, night, night. Perhaps the only realities are night and departure. Everything else is illusion. Staying anywhere in the light of day is illusion. If there were no Jews they would have to be invented.
Yes, I am a child of the night, a child of departures. The barking of dogs is my signpost, the voices of owls mark my road into the darkness. Inside my head I have stopped talking, I am quiet. I give myself to the old, old night that waits within me, the old, old night in the old, old wood. In this night the charcoal-burners crouch listening by their hearths while the trees pray, the wind speaks, the leaves rustle like souls departing with the upward-flying sparks. Quiet, quiet, the mist is rising from the river, the bats are writing the names of darkness, the owl is teaching the mice: ‘Hear, O Israeclass="underline" the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’
I listen for my Bath Kol but I hear only the thumping of my heart and the sound of my footfalls. Why am I on this road through the dark wood? I am afraid. What have I to sustain me? Jesus has appeared to me but what have I to do with Jesus? I think of the tax-collector, perhaps he too has passed through this wood wondering what would sustain him. ‘Thou Jew!’ whispers the Bath Kol suddenly, whispers the Bath Kol in my ear in the dark wood. ‘My Jew!’ whispers the Bath Kol.
In fear I go forward. The quietness of the Bath Kol draws itself together in the dark, becomes a point of silence from which a hugeness grows. In the hugeness I perceive this wood, this rising ground to be the Mount of Venus between the opened thighs of the mother-space that is time. The wood is clamorous with the silence of birds and demons and great wordless mouths full of sharp teeth. When I close my eyes I see the colour of the dark: it is a strong purple-blue, very luminous and vibrating like a crystal. In those crystalline vibrations I seem to see a pale green phosphorescence in the shape of a man hanging head downward by one leg. He is hung by one ankle, his other leg is bent, the bent leg crossing the straight to make an upside-down figure four. His arms are bent to make a triangle on each side, his hands are behind him. He fades with the purple-blue and I hear the low voice of a bell that nods to the walking of an animal. ‘Thou also,’ says the rough and broken voice of the bell, so I know it to be the bell hung from the neck of Death’s pale horse. I see Death on his horse, all luminous bones that look as if they would clatter but they move in perfect silence. Death beckons and I follow through the dark wood in which he moves like a lantern.
There is a stench of rotting flesh. I am standing in front of a tree; it is an oak tree. In the crystalline vibrations of the purple-blue I see the shapes of oak leaves trembling and I see the man hanging by one leg. He is naked. He has no head, his head has been cut off. Much of the flesh has been eaten off the bones by animals; what remains of the corpse is bloated and writhing with maggots. The swollen male member sticks out stiffly, uncircumcised and tumescent with rot. Death says to me in a low voice, ‘This is that man who saved your life when they cut off your manhood.’
I begin to cry with great wracking sobs that shake my whole body. In this stinking maggoty corpse I see a light like a candle in a tabernacle, within the stench I smell a sweetness. Inside the corpse I see Jesus Christ crucified, broken and twisted on his cross that is right-side up in the upside-down body. ‘No, no!’ I cry, ‘It mustn’t be like that! Stop it, thou Jew, stop being crucified! Come down off that cross!’ I claw at the rotting corpse, trying to pull the crucified Jesus out of the dead flesh so that I can get him off his cross. Jesus smiles and begins to fade. O God! what will there be now? Only the black spin of the universe, only eternal motion without face or voice when Jesus is gone. ‘Jesus!’ I cry, ‘Don’t go away!’
‘Hurry!’ whispers the Bath Kol, ‘Hurry to Jerusalem!’
Hearing that urgent whisper I become terribly, terribly afraid that I shall not be able to get to Jerusalem quickly enough, that no one will get to Jerusalem quickly enough to keep Christ from going away. How do I yearn for the haunting dread and joy of his voice in the echoing dark of the world inside me, the comfort and terror of his presence. How do I long for him the virtuality without limit, him the quickener, him the mystery. Remembering no prayer I howl in my fear and I begin to kick the maggoty corpse. ‘Jesus!’ I cry, ‘Come thou out of there! Thou Jew! Be with me!’ But there is only darkness and rottenness in the corpse, the light that was within it has gone and the sweetness. The corpse is too high for me to kick properly; kicking it I fall down. Lying there in the wet grass under the corpse I feel maggots under my fingers and among them a gold ring, I feel the goldenness of it in the darkness, it must have fallen from the headless man’s gullet when I kicked him.
It is of course the tax-collector’s wedding ring, the circlet of gold that proclaims his union with Sophia. There has been a day in the life of this headless carcass when it knelt beside that splendid woman, exchanged vows with her, put a ring on her finger, received this ring on its own finger that is now bloated and glistening. I feel in this dead man’s headless memory the touch of her hand, the scent of her breath, the softness of her mouth in the marriage kiss. In the memory of this rotting stump of flesh I hear the rustling of silk that slides away to reveal the dazzle of her naked flesh, the imperious and delicate scroll of her law. This golden circlet has dropped with the maggots out of the dead gullet because the pilgrim tax-collector before his death has swallowed his wedding ring, has renewed his covenant with his wife before being murdered and robbed. What am I to do with this ring from the finger of this maggot feast that was the lawful husband of my wife of one night?