She turned to the mother. “And you, Mary, may you feel the pain that I have felt!”
As soon as she had spoken, she turned her head and riveted her eyes once more upon her son. Magdalene was now embracing the foot of the cross and singing the dirge for the Zealot, her hands touching his feet, her hair and arms covered with blood.
The gypsies took their knives and began to slash the crucified man’s clothing in order to portion out the pieces. Throwing lots, they divided his rags. Nothing remained but his white headcloth, splotched with large drops of blood.
“Let’s give it to the son of the Carpenter,” they said. “Poor fellow, he did a good job too.”
They found him sitting in the sun, curled up and shivering.
“That’s your share, Carpenter,” one of them called, tossing him the bloody kerchief. “Best wishes for many more crucifixions to come!”
“And here’s to your own, Carpenter!” said the other gypsy, laughing, and he patted him lovingly on the back.
Chapter Five
LET US GO, my children,” cried the old rabbi, opening wide his arms to collect the bewildered mass of despairing men and women. “Let us go! I have a great secret to reveal to you. Courage!”
They began to run through the narrow lanes. Behind them raced the cavalry, herding them on. The housewives shrieked and closed their doors-more blood was going to be spilled. The old rabbi fell twice while running and started to cough again and spit up blood. Judas and Barabbas took him in their arms. The people arrived in flocks and burrowed into the synagogue, panting. They stuffed themselves in, filled the courtyard too, and bolted the street door.
They waited, hanging upon the rabbi’s lips. Amid so much bitterness, what secret could the old man divulge to them to gladden their hearts? For years now they had suffered misfortune after misfortune, crucifixion after crucifixion. God’s apostles continually sprouted out of Jerusalem, the Jordan, the desert, or rushed down from the mountains dressed in rags and chains and frothing at the mouth-and every one of them was crucified.
An angry murmur arose. The branches and palm trees which decorated the walls, the pentagrams, the sacred scrolls on the lectern with their pompous words: chosen people, promised land, kingdom of heaven, Messiah-none of these could comfort them any longer. Hope, lasting too long, had begun to turn to despair. God is not in a hurry, but man is, and they could wait no longer. Not even the painted hopes which took up both walls of the synagogue could deceive them now. Once while reading the prophet Ezekiel the rabbi had been swept away by God. He jumped up, shouted, wept and danced, but still did not find relief. The prophet’s words had become part of his flesh. In order to relieve himself he took brushes and paint, locked himself in the synagogue and began in a divine frenzy to cover the wall with the prophet’s visions: endless desert, skulls and bones, mountains of human skeletons, and, above, a heaven brilliantly red, like red-hot iron. A gigantic hand shot out from the center of the heavens, seized Ezekiel by the scruff of the neck and held him suspended in the air. But the vision overflowed onto the other wall as well. Here Ezekiel stood plunged up to his knees in bones. His mouth was bright green and open, and coming from inside was a ribbon with red letters: “People of Israel, people of Israel, the Messiah has come!” The bones strung themselves together, the skulls rose up full of teeth and mud, and the terrible hand emerged from heaven holding the New Jerusalem in its palm-the New Jerusalem, freshly built, brilliantly illuminated, all emeralds and rubies!
The people looked at these paintings and shook their heads, murmuring. This angered the old rabbi.
“Why do you murmur?” he shouted at them. “Don’t you believe in the God of our fathers? One more has been crucified: the Saviour has come one step closer. That, you men of little faith, is what crucifixion means!”
He seized a scroll from the lectern and unrolled it with a violent movement. The sun entered through the open window; a stork descended from the sky and alighted on the roof of the house opposite, as though it too wanted to hear. Out of the devastated chest bounded the happy, triumphant cry: “ ‘Sound in Zion the trumpet of victory! Proclaim in Jerusalem the joyous news! Shout! Jehovah has come to his people. Rise up, Jerusalem, lift high your hearts! Look! From east and west the Lord herds your sons. The mountains have been leveled, the hills have fled, all the trees have poured forth their perfume. Put on the trappings of your glory, Jerusalem. Happiness has come to the people of Israel forever and ever.’ ”
“When, when?” was heard from the crowd. Everyone turned. A tiny old man, slim, and wrinkled like a raisin, had stood up on tiptoe. “When, Father, when?” he was shouting.
The rabbi angrily rolled up the prophecies.
“Are you in a hurry, Manases?” he asked.
“Yes!” answered the tiny old man. Tears were running down his face. “I have no time; I’m going to die.”
The rabbi stretched forth his arm and pointed to Ezekiel buried in the bones.
“Look, Manases! You’ll be resurrected!”
“I’m old, I tell you, and blind: I cannot see.”
Peter intervened. The day was nearing its end. At night he fished the lake of Gennesaret, and he was pressed. “Father,” he said, “you promised us a secret to comfort our hearts. What is that secret?”
Holding their breath, they all crowded around the old rabbi. As many as could fit came in from the courtyard. The heat was intense and there was a heavy smell of human sweat. The sexton threw tear-shaped pellets of cedar sap into the censer to deodorize the air.
The old rabbi climbed up onto a stall to avoid suffocating.
“My children,” he said, wiping away his sweat, “our hearts have filled with crosses. My black beard long ago turned gray, my gray beard turned white, my teeth fell to the ground. What old Manases cried I’ve been crying for years: ‘How long, Lord, how long? Shall I die without seeing the Messiah?’ I asked this over and over again, and one night the miracle happened: God answered. No, that was not the miracle. God replies every time we question him, but our flesh is bemired and almost deaf: we do not hear. That night, however, I heard-and that was the miracle.”
“What did you hear? Tell us everything, Father,” Peter called. He elbowed his way through the crowd and stood in front of the rabbi. The old man bent over, looked at Peter and smiled.
“God, Peter, is a fisherman like yourself. He too goes out to fish at night when the moon is full or nearly full; and that night it was full-it sailed in the sky as white as milk, so exceedingly merciful and benevolent that I could not close my eyes. The house constricted me. I marched through the narrow lanes and left Nazareth, climbed up high, perched on a rock and stared toward the south-toward holy Jerusalem. The moon leaned over and looked at me like a human being, smiling; I looked at it-at its mouth, its cheeks, at the corners of its eyes-and sighed. I felt it was speaking to me, speaking to me out of the silence of the night: yet I could not hear… Not a leaf stirred on the earth; the unmown plain smelled just like bread, milk cascaded down the mountains around me, down Tabor, Gilboa and Carmel… This is God’s night, I thought. This full moon must be the nocturnal face of the Lord. Nights in the future Jerusalem will be such as this.
“No sooner had this thought come to me than my eyes filled with tears. Grievance and fear took hold of me. ‘I’ve grown old,’ I shouted. ‘Am I going to die without the Messiah first having gladdened my sight?’
“I jumped to my feet. The sacred fury had seized me again. Removing my belt and all my clothes, I stood before God’s eyes just as I was when my mother begot me. I wanted him to see how I had aged, how I’d withered and shriveled up like a fig leaf in autumn, like the bare dangling stem of a cluster of grapes which has been plundered by birds. I wanted him to see me, pity me, and move quickly!