“But what did the blessed fellow lack?” asked Philip, the shepherd. “He had every gift God could give! What came over him just at the flower of his youth?” He asked, but inside him he rejoiced secretly that rich men also had a worm which devoured them.
“He grew uneasy all of a sudden,” Jacob answered, “and he began to toss and turn all night long on his bed like a youngster in need of a woman.”
“Why didn’t he get married? There were brides for the asking.”
“He said he didn’t want to marry a woman.”
“What, then?”
“The kingdom of heaven for him-just like Andrew.”
The men burst out laughing.
“And may they live happily ever after!” shouted an old fisherman, rubbing his calloused hands together mischievously.
Peter opened his mouth, but before he could utter a word, hoarse cries filled the air: “Look! The cross-maker, the cross-maker!”
Simultaneously, they turned their bewildered heads. Down the road the son of the carpenter could be seen mounting on unsteady feet, and panting under the weight of the cross.
“The cross-maker! The cross-maker!” roared the crowd. “The traitor!”
The two gypsies looked down from the top of the hill. When they saw the cross approaching they jumped with joy: the sun had been roasting them. Spitting into their palms, they took their pickaxes and began to dig a pit. The thick, flat-headed nails they placed on a near-by stone. Three had been ordered; they had forged five.
Men and women had joined hands and formed a chain in order to block the cross-maker’s passage. Magdalene broke away from the crowd and pinned her eyes on the son of Mary, who was mounting. Her heart swelled with distress as she recalled the games they used to play together when they were still small children, he three years old, she four. What deep, unrevealable joy they had experienced, what unspeakable sweetness! For the first time they had both sensed the deep dark fact that one was a man and the other a woman: two bodies which seemed once upon a time to have been one; but some merciless God separated them, and now the pieces had found each other again and were trying to join, to reunite. The older they grew, the more clearly they felt what a miracle it was that one should be a man and the other a woman, and they looked at each other in mute terror, waiting like two wild beasts for the hunger to increase and the hour to come when they would flow one into the other and rejoin that which God had sundered. But then, one evening at a festival in Cana when her beloved held out his hand to give her the rose and seal their engagement, merciless God had rushed down upon them and separated them once more. And ever since then…
Magdalene’s eyes filled with tears. She stepped forward. The cross-bearer was passing directly before her.
She leaned over him. Her scented hair touched his naked, bloody shoulders.
“Cross-maker!” she growled in a hoarse, strangulated voice. She was trembling.
The youth turned and riveted his large afflicted eyes upon her for a split second. Convulsive spasms played about his lips. His mouth was contorted, but he lowered his head immediately, and Magdalene did not have time to distinguish whether the contortion was from pain, fear, or a smile.
Still leaning over him, she spoke, gasping for breath. “Have you no pride? Don’t you remember? How can you lower yourself to this!”
And after a moment, as though she had heard his voice give her an answer, she shouted, “No, no, poor wretch, it isn’t God; it’s the devil!”
The crowd meanwhile had darted forward to block his path. An old man lifted his stick and struck him; two cowherds who had dashed down from Mount Tabor to join the others at the miracle nailed him in place with their goads. Barabbas felt the hatchet go up and down in his fist. But as soon as the old rabbi saw the danger, he slid off the redbeard’s neck and ran to his nephew’s defense.
“Stop, my children,” he screamed. “It’s a great sin to block God’s path, do not do it. What is ordained must come to pass. Do not step in the way. Let the cross through-it is sent by God; let the gypsies make ready their nails, let Adonai’s apostle mount the cross. Do not be afraid; have faith! God’s law is such that the knife must reach clear to the bone. Otherwise no miracle will take place! Listen to your old rabbi, my children. I’m telling you the truth. Man cannot sprout wings unless he has first reached the brink of the abyss!”
The cowherds withdrew their goads, stones fell from clenched fists, the people stepped aside to clear God’s path, and the son of Mary stumbled onward, the cross upon his back. The grasshoppers could be heard sawing the air in the olive grove beyond; a hungry butcher’s dog barked happily on top of the hill. Farther on, within the mass of people, a woman wrapped in a violet kerchief cried out and fainted.
Peter now stood with gaping mouth and protruding eyes. He was watching the son of Mary. He knew him. Mary’s family home in Cana was opposite his own, and her aged parents, Joachim and Anne, were old bosom friends of Peter’s parents. They were saintly people. The angels went regularly in and out of their simple cottage, and one night the neighbors saw God Himself stride across their threshold disguised as a beggar. They knew it was God, because the house shook as though invaded by an earthquake, and nine months later the miracle happened: Anne, an old woman in her sixties, gave birth to Mary. Peter must have been less than five years old at the time, but he remembered well all the celebrations which followed, how the whole village was set in motion, how men and women ran to offer their congratulations, some carrying flour and milk, others dates and honey, others tiny infant’s clothing: presents for the confined woman and her child. Peter’s mother had been the midwife. She had heated water, thrown in salt, and bathed the wailing newborn. And now, here was Mary’s son passing in front of him loaded down with the cross, while everyone spat on him and pelted him with stones. As Peter looked and looked, he felt his heart become roused. His was an unlucky fate. The God of Israel had mercilessly chosen him, the son of Mary, to build crosses so that the prophets could be crucified. He is omnipotent, Peter reflected with a shudder; he might have picked me to do the same, but he chose the son of Mary instead and I escaped… Suddenly Peter’s roused heart grew calm, and all at once he felt deeply grateful to the son of Mary, who had taken the sin and lifted it to his shoulders.
Just as all this was jostling in his mind, the cross-bearer halted, out of breath.
“I’m tired, tired,” he murmured. He looked around him to find a stone or a man he could lean against, but saw nothing except lifted fists and thousands of eyes staring at him with hatred. Then he heard what seemed to him wings in the sky, and his heart leaped up. Perhaps God had taken pity on him at the very last moment and dispatched his angels. He raised his eyes. Yes, there were wings above him: crows! He grew angry. Obstinacy took possession of him and he resolutely lifted his foot in order to continue walking and mount the hill. But the stones sank away from under his sole. He tripped, began to fall forward. Peter rushed out in time to hold him up. Taking the cross from him, he lifted it to his own shoulder.
“Let me help you,” he said. “You’re tired.”
The son of Mary turned and gazed at the fisherman but did not recognize him. This entire journey seemed to him a dream. His shoulders had suddenly been unburdened and now he was flying in the air, just as one flies in one’s dreams. It couldn’t have been a cross, he thought; it must have been a pair of wings! Sponging the sweat and blood from his face, he followed behind Peter with sure steps.
The air was a fire which licked the stones. The sheep dogs which the gypsies had brought to lap up the blood stretched their well-fed bodies out at the foot of a rock, by the edge of the pit their masters had dug. They were panting, and sweat poured from their dangling tongues. You could hear the drumming of the people’s heads in this blast furnace, the bubbling of their brains. In such heat all frontiers shifted-good sense and foolishness, cross and wings, God and man: all were transposed.