At this the Resurrected One turned His back on the speaker and spoke out clearly yet with anguish. ‘This cannot be true. If I fail in this I fail in all else besides.’ He looked up. ‘Father this life which You have set beyond men needs Judas just as it needs Me. His deed, too, is redeemed in the love which exacted it of him.’
Saying this He half-turned again and I was able to see that His eyes were entirely without light.
While the others huddled together still dazed by revelation I got up unhesitatingly and, shivering, I went and knelt at His feet, saying, ‘There are many rumours in Jerusalem and Rome that are not true. See, I am Judas . . . I am alive and I am here.’
As I spoke the light came back into His face and leaning forward He took both my hands in His and helped my fever-shaken body to its feet. Then, looking upwards, He exclaimed, ‘Thank you, Father. Now at last we can both be free.’
‘But I’m not free,’ I hastened to add. ‘I had a brother once and I betrayed him –’
‘Go to your brother,’ He said at once, ‘and make your peace with him even as I have had to do with my need of you.’
At that I felt the sweat break out on my skin and run down my body like tropical rain. I began slowly to grow warm again and I could hear the cool wind of an autumn nightfall stirring down the slope and through the leaves. For long I had feared the voice of the wind, but now I was grateful for the sound. It was almost dark and the stars were dropping their light like tears of compassion upon the night. Amazed, I looked around me. There were no people to be seen. I was quite alone yet for the first time in many years I did not feel lonely. I stretched back into my blankets and lay down watching the stars go down behind the hill between Imwash and Bethlehem. I don’t think I slept at all and yet it was the shortest night I have ever known. The day came so swiftly that night could have been the mere shadow of a cloud passing across the sun. My own darkness had been overtaken at last.
When morning came I knew clearly what I was going to do. I felt like a ship long becalmed reeling in the wind that had at last found its sails. I was going at once to my brother. War and the clash of the world’s armies seemed insignificant in comparison with that slight deed. For the first time I feared lest I be killed before I could accomplish it. Death, I now understood, was a moment of supreme truth that one could only meet with equal truth. I prayed that I should not carry this secret, this lie of my betrayal with me into death.
My resourcefulness which I had thrown so wholeheartedly into destruction was now diverted towards quite another course of action. Before breakfast I had summoned a doctor from Jerusalem. That same day I had his order for a month’s convalescent leave in my pocket. Though everyone declared it impossible, I managed to get from Palestine to Egypt and from Egypt, with the help of old friends in the South African Air Force, by stages to my home.
Barely a fortnight later I got out of a train one morning at the little railway siding near my brother’s home. Everyone stared hard at my uniform which they found as difficult to recognize as they did me. I managed to hire an old car for the day because that was all the time I could allow myself if I were to be back before my leave expired, and I drove to my brother’s farm. During all this period I scarcely had eyes for the outside world at all but now even I could not help noticing how dry was the world. There was no grass left on the veld and the scrub was twisted and burnt black in the sun’s fire; sheep and cattle were so thin that their ribs and bones seemed about to pierce their taut skins. Vultures, crows and buzzards circled the sky wherever some drought-stricken creature lay and wherever I got out of the car to open a gate the smell of death assailed my nose. Yet despite the tragedy of the thirsty land and the half-starved animals, as the morning wore on and I passed through great grey plains between shimmering blue hills and came nearer to my brother’s home, a strange excitement began to rise in me. In the north-west, where our rains come from, I saw the snow peaks of a range of thunder-clouds mounting in the sky but by the time I got to my brother’s home they were turning black. Almost in their shadow I drove up an avenue of trembling poplars grown tall and broad since my last visit, drew up sharply before the wide stoep, jumped out and ran up the steps. Before I could knock, the front door opened and my brother’s wife came out.
I had never known her well but I remarked what an austere spirit their joint struggle with the difficult earth had made of her. She recognized me immediately yet in the very act of recognition her expression hardened in a way that was not promising. She did not even offer me her cheek to kiss but held out a cool hand and then managed to collect herself to explain: ‘This is a surprise. Come in and I’ll go and call your brother. He’ll be amazed to see you! Why didn’t you send us word you were coming?’
‘That’s a long story,’ I said quickly, ‘and I can explain later. But where is he? I’ll go and find him.’
‘Then I’ll go on seeing to the dinner,’ she answered not without relief. ‘He’s in the garden at the back, leading the last of our water to the trees and vegetables. We’ve had a terrible time, as you’ve noticed I expect. No rain for a year. Sheep and cattle dying and all this lovely garden practically dead.’ She looked at me as if I’d been away enjoying myself somewhere instead of fighting a war.
‘It must have been terrible,’ I agreed at once. ‘But it looks as if the rain is on its way at last.’
‘It has come up like this a dozen times recently only to be blown away by evening,’ she answered grimly.
I left her on that note and went to look for my brother. I found him in the centre of the garden leading a trickle of water with infinite patience and care from one parched, withering tree to the other. I saw him before he saw me. Of course he looked older, more bent, in fact almost twisted like one of the indigenous thorn-trees of our thirsty land. Indeed, he appeared to be so much a part of the earth that he might have grown out of it. I noticed the hump on his back was more pronounced than before but at that moment he heard me and turned round with the disconcerting adroitness so unexpected in one with so awkward a frame. He saw me and went still with shock. His dark eyes looked into my blue ones and I saw their light was still imprisoned in a moment far back in time. How well I knew it and how clearly I understood it now that I was free. Had I not learnt lately that death is not something that happens at the end of our life? It is imprisonment in one moment of time, confinement in one sharp uncompromising deed or aspect or ourselves. Death is exclusion from renewal of our present-day selves. Neither heaven nor hell are hereafter. Hell is time arrested within and refusing to join in the movement of wind and stars. Heaven is the boulder rock unrolled to let new life out: it is man restored to all four of his seasons rounding for eternity.
So I went up to my brother, and putting both hands on his shoulders said: ‘It’s good to see you again, Ouboet – and still growing things.’
He stammered: ‘Ouboet, I wish I’d known you were coming. I’d have liked to be there to meet you. But come on up to the house. You must be tired. Can you stay long?’
‘No, Ou Boetie,’ I said and explained quickly, ‘I’ve no right in a sense to be here at all. It’s taken me a fortnight to get here, and I’ll be lucky to be back to the front in time if I’m not to get into serious trouble. So I’m going back in a few hours to catch the night train north. I’ve been hitch-hiking my way by air down here. I’ve come here just to see you and spend these few hours with you.’
‘Really, Ouboet?’ he said as if he could not believe his ears: ‘Is that really so?’
‘Of course,’ I told him tightening my grip on his shoulders and feeling I had no time even to go through the conventional motions of such a meeting. So I went straight to the heart of the matter and told him I had come to tell him of a great wrong I had once done him and to ask his forgiveness.