That is my favorite miracle. It was not hard to choose—it’s the only miracle I like. I had just discovered the husk, and I was dazzled. The first time you do something that is so far beyond you, you immediately forget the disproportionate effort it took, and remember only the wonder of the result.
And besides, the issue was wine at a feast. Later on, things took a turn for the worse—at stake were matters of suffering, illness, death, or catching poor fish I would have rather left alive and free. Above all, knowingly resorting to the power of the husk has turned out to be a thousand times harder than its discovery.
The worst thing is people’s expectations. No one in Cana, apart from my mother, required anything of me. Later, wherever I went, they had seen me coming, they’d left a leper or an invalid in my path. When I accomplished a miracle, it was no longer a gift of grace, but the fulfillment of my duty.
How many times did I read in the gaze of a dying person or someone holding out his stump to me, not an entreaty, but a threat! If they had dared to formulate their thought, it would have been, “You’ve become famous with your nonsense, now you’d better take responsibility for it, otherwise, just you wait and see!” There were times when I did not accomplish the miracle they’d asked for because I didn’t have the strength to obliterate myself and release the power of the husk: how they hated me for it!
Later on, I gave it some thought, and I did not approve of my wondrous feats. They gave the wrong impression, this was not what I had to come to deliver; love was no longer free, it had to serve a purpose. Not to mention what I discovered this morning, during the triaclass="underline" none of those who had benefited from my miracles felt the slightest gratitude. On the contrary, they reproached me bitterly for those miracles, even the bride and groom from Cana.
I don’t want to remember any of that. All I want to remember is the joy at Cana, the innocence of our happiness, drinking that wine that had come out of nowhere, the purity of our initial intoxication. Such intoxication is only worth it if it’s shared. That evening at Cana, we were all drunk and in the best way. Yes, my mother was tipsy, and it suited her. Since Joseph’s death, I had rarely seen her look happy. My mother was dancing, I danced with her, my dear old mama I love so well. My drunkenness told her that I loved her, and I could sense her response, even though she said nothing, my son, I know there is something special about you, I suspect someday it will it pose a problem, but for the time being I’m just proud of you and happy to be drinking this good wine you made for us with your magic.
And that night, I truly was drunk, and my drunkenness was holy. Before the incarnation, I did not weigh anything. The paradox is that in order to experience lightness you must weigh something. Inebriation frees you from weight and gives you the impression you are about to take flight. Our spirit does not fly, it moves unhindered, and that’s very different. Birds have a body; their flight is nothing less than conquest. I can never repeat it often enough: having a body is the best thing there is.
I expect that I will think just the opposite tomorrow, when my body is being tortured. And yet, for all that, can I disown the discoveries it has given me? The greatest joys of my life are those I have known through my body. And must I point out that my soul and spirit played an important part as well?
The miracles, too, I obtained through my body. What I call the husk is physical. To have access to it presupposes the temporary obliteration of the spirit. I have never been any other man than myself, but I am deeply convinced that every one of us has this power. The reason it is so rarely put to use is that it’s very difficult to access. One must have the strength and the courage to elude the spirit, and that is not a metaphor. A few human beings managed to do this before me, and a few human beings will manage after me.
My knowledge of time does not differ from my knowledge of my fate: I know Τι, but I know nothing of Πώς. Names belong to Πώς, and so I don’t know the name of a writer in the future who will say, “The most profound thing in man is his skin.” He will come close to a revelation, but in any case, even those who glorify him will not understand the concrete nature of his words.
It’s not exactly the skin, it’s just beneath. Therein lies omnipotence.
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Tonight, there will be no miracle. There is no way I can shy away from what awaits me tomorrow. Not that I wouldn’t like to.
Just once, I misused the power of the husk. I was hungry, and the fruit on the fig tree was not ripe. My desire to bite into a fig—warm with sunshine, juicy and sweet—was so great that I cursed the tree, and condemned it to never again bear fruit. I said it was for a parable, not the most convincing.
How could I have been so unfair? It was not fig season. That was my only destructive miracle. In truth, on that day, I was ordinary. Frustrated by my greedy appetite, I allowed desire to turn to anger. And yet, appetite can be a very fine thing, provided it is kept intact. I needed only remind myself that in a month or two I would be able to satisfy it.
I am not without faults. There is an anger inside me that would like nothing better than to explode. There was the episode with the merchants at the Temple: at least my cause was a just one. From there to saying, “I came not to send peace, but a sword,” there’s still some leeway.
On the eve of my death, I have realized I am ashamed of nothing, except the fig tree. I really did take it out on an innocent creation. No point in moping in pointless regret, it simply bothers me that I cannot go and sit quietly next to the tree, embrace it, and ask its forgiveness. All it would have to do is forgive me, and its curse would end there and then, it would bear fruit once again, and be proud of the delicious weight on its branches.
I recall the orchard I walked through with the disciples. The apple trees were collapsing with the weight of the fruit, we gorged ourselves on those apples, the best we’d ever tasted—fragrant, crisp, and juicy. We stopped when we could eat no more, our bellies about to explode, and we fell to the ground, laughing at our gluttony.
“Look at all these apples we won’t be able to eat, that no one will eat!” said John. “It’s so sad!”
“Sad for who?” I asked.
“The trees.”
“Do you think so? Apple trees are happy to produce their apples, even if no one eats them.”
“How do you know?”
“Try being an apple tree.”
John was silent for a moment, and then he said:
“You’re right.”
“We’re the ones who feel sad—at the thought we can’t eat all the apples.”
Everyone burst out laughing.
I was a better man with the apple tree than with the fig tree. Why was that? Because I had satisfied my appetite. We are better people when we have had our pleasure, it’s as simple as that.
Alone in my cell, I feel as if I am that fig tree I cursed. It makes me sad, and so I do what everyone does: I try to move on to something else. The problem with this method is that it doesn’t work very well. Apple tree, fig tree—I wondered which tree Judas used to hang himself. They told me the branch broke. The tree must not have been very strong, because Judas didn’t weigh very much.
I always knew Judas would betray me. But, in keeping with the nature of my prescience, I didn’t know how he would go about it.
Our first encounter was particularly striking. I was in a village in the middle of nowhere where I understood no one. The longer I spoke, the more I could sense their hostility increasing, so much so that I began to see myself through their eyes, and I shared their consternation regarding this clown who had come to preach love to them.