“Why do you cry?” he said to them compassionately. “Why do you resist God’s will? Listen to what I shall tell you, and do not be afraid. Time is a fire, beloved wives. Time is a fire, and God holds the spit. Each year he rotates one paschal lamb. This year the paschal lamb is Jerusalem; next year it will be Rome; the following year-”
“Be quiet, Rabbi,” Mary screamed. “You forget that we’re women, and weak.”
“Forgive me, Mary,” said Jesus. “I forgot. When the heart takes the uphill road it forgets, and has no mercy.”
While he spoke, heavy steps were heard outside in the street. There was the sound of gasping breaths, and thick staffs knocked loudly on the door.
The Negro jumped up, seized the bolt of the door, looked at Jesus and smiled mockingly. “Shall I open?” he asked, hardly able to restrain his laughter. “It’s your old companions, Jesus of Nazareth.”
“My old companions?”
“You shall see them!” said the Negro, and he threw the door wide open.
A cluster of tiny old men appeared in the doorway. Deteriorated and unrecognizable, they crept into the yard, one leaning against the other. It seemed as though they were glued together and could not be torn apart.
Jesus advanced one pace and stopped. He wanted to extend his hand to bid them welcome, but suddenly his soul felt crushed by an unbearable bitterness-by bitterness, indignation and pity. He clenched his fists and waited. There was a heavy effluvium from charred wood, singed hair and open wounds. The air stank. The Negro had climbed up onto the horse block. He watched them and laughed.
Taking one step more, Jesus turned to the old man who crept in the lead. “You, in front,” he said, “come here. Stand still while I push away the ruins of time and see who you are. My heart pounds, but this hanging flesh, these eyes filled with discharge-I do not know them.”
“Don’t you recognize me, my rabbi?”
“Peter! Are you the rock on which, once upon a time in the folly of my youth, I wanted to build my church? How you’ve degenerated, son of Jonah! No longer a rock but a sponge full of holes!”
“The years, my rabbi…”
“What years? The years are not to blame. As long as the soul stands erect it holds the body high and does not allow the years to touch it. Your soul has declined, Peter, your soul!”
“The troubles of the world came upon me. I married, had children, received wounds, saw Jerusalem burn… I’m human: all that broke me.”
“Yes, you’re human and all that broke you,” Jesus murmured with sympathy. “Poor Peter, in the state the world’s in today, you have to be both God and the devil to endure.”
He turned to the next one, who emerged from behind Peter’s shoulder. “And you?” he said. “They cut off your nose: your face has become a skull-all holes. How do you expect me to recognize you? Go on, old companion, speak. Say ‘Rabbi!’ and perhaps I shall remember who you are!”
The ramshackle form uttered a tremendous cry: “Rabbi!” and then lowered its head and was still.
“Jacob! Zebedee’s eldest son, the massive colossus, the mind set solidly foursquare!”
“His remains, Rabbi,” said Jacob, sniveling. “A wild storm crippled me. The keel cracked, the hull opened, the mast fell. I return to port a wreck.”
“What port?”
“You, Rabbi.”
“What can I do for you? I am not a shipyard where you can be caulked. What I shall say, Jacob, is hard, but just: the only port for you is the bottom of the sea. As your father used to say, two and two make four.”
He was suddenly overcome with indignation and intense sorrow. He turned to a second chaplet of old men. “And you three? Ho, you, you, the gawky bean-stalk: once upon a time weren’t you Nathanael? You’ve grown flabby. Just look at your bloated, dangling backside, belly and double chins! What did you do with your firm muscles, Nathanael? You are nothing but the skeleton of a three-storied house now. Yes, only scaffolding remains, but do not sigh-that is enough, Nathanael, to get you to heaven.”
But Nathanael became angry. “What heaven? It wasn’t bad enough I lost my ears, fingers and one eye! No, besides that, everything you pounded into us: the pomp, strutting, majesty, kingdom of heaven-the whole lot was drunkenness and now we’ve sobered up! What do you think, Philip? Am I right?”
“What can I say, Nathanael,” said a tiny old man lost in the middle of the pile. “What can I say, brother! It’s I who have to answer for your joining us!”
Jesus shook his head sympathetically and took the hand of this tiny old man they called Philip. “I fell hopelessly in love with you, Philip, best of all shepherds, because you had no sheep. You possessed only the shepherd’s crook and you herded the air. At night you took out the winds and put them to pasture. In your imagination you lighted fires, in your imagination you set up the great cauldrons, boiled the milk and sent it flowing from the top of the mountain down to the plain, so that the poor could drink. All your wealth was within your heart. Outside: poverty, hootings, solitude and hunger. That is what it means to be my disciple! And now… Philip, Philip, best of all shepherds, how you’ve fallen! You longed, alas, for real sheep, sheep whose wool, whose flesh, you could grasp in your hand-and you perished!”
“I get hungry,” Philip replied. “What do you expect me to do?”
“Think of God and you shall be filled!” Jesus answered, and then suddenly his heart hardened again.
He turned to a hunched-over old man who had collapsed into the watering trough and remained there, shivering. He lifted the rags which covered him, pushed aside his eyebrows, but could not understand who he was. When he searched under the hair, however, he found a large ear with an age-old broken quill behind it. He laughed.
“Welcome to the immense ear,” he said, greeting him. “Huge, erect, full of hairs, it used to quiver like a rabbit’s, all fear, curiosity and hunger. Welcome to the inky fingers and the inkstand heart! Do you still fill papers with blots, Matthew, my scribe? The quill, completely broken, is still behind your ear. Did you wage war using this as your lance?”
“Why do you jeer at me,” said the other with a bitter taste on his lips. “Will you never stop ridiculing us? Think of the magnificence with which I began to write your life and times. I too would have become immortal, along with you. And now, the peacock has lost his feathers. It wasn’t a peacock; it was a chicken. What a shame I worked so hard!”
Jesus suddenly felt his knees go slack. He bowed his head; but then, quickly, angrily, he raised it and pointed his finger threateningly at Matthew.
“Quiet!” he said. “How dare you!”
An emaciated, cross-eyed old man appeared between Nathanael’s legs and chuckled. Jesus turned, saw him and recognized him immediately.
“Thomas, my seven-month babe, welcome! Where did you sow your teeth? What did you do with the two hairs you had on your scalp? And from what goat did you uproot that greasy little beard which hangs from your chin? Two-faced, seven-eyed, all-cunning Thomas, is it you?”
“In person! Only the teeth are missing-they fell out along the way-and the two hairs. Everything else is in order.”
“The mind?”
“A true cock. It mounts the dung heap knowing well enough It isn’t the one who brings the sun, but it crows nevertheless every morning and brings it-because it knows the right time to crow.
“And did you fight too, hero of heroes, to save Jerusalem?”
“Me fight? Am I stupid? I played the prophet.”
“The prophet? So the tiny ant-mind grew wings? Did God blow upon you?”
“What has God got to do with this? My intellect, all by itself, found the secret.”
“What secret?”
“What being a prophet means. Your holiness also knew it once, but I think you’ve forgotten.”