Well, it was all nonsense, moonshine, child’s thoughts, but I was disappointed just the same. I turned away with John and we stumbled drunkenly back down the hill.
My own family was far away, so I celebrated the Feast of Pesach in Jerusalem with Ezra my cousin and John of Siloam, but at Ezra’s house. Ezra was a comfortable warm man, doing well out of the occupation, but I’ll say this for him, he never wavered in his support of the Cause. There were ten of us sat down that next day in the afternoon to eat, and after Ezra had blessed the cup of consecration we had our meal of bitter herbs and unleavened bread and pascal lamb. Ezra, dipping his first morsel of bread in the haroseth, handed round a sop to each one of us, and when we had all taken a piece he said: ‘To Jesus our leader, mercifully saved to us this day, thanks be to God!’ Then we all sang the Hallel before beginning the feast.
Well, of course it’s a time for rejoicing, and I was glad and thankful to be there, and who wouldn’t be; but I couldn’t really enter into the spirit of the thing. I had refused to go with Ezra to the Temple with the lamb. I’d shut my ears to the trumpets. I had spent all the morning of the Sabbath lying on my pallet in the upstairs room.
That night when the bazaars were open again I wandered with Ezra listening to the people. Many seemed already to have forgotten the executions, and I was angry at their cheerful mien. Those who did speak of it spoke mostly of the death of the holy man, because I think it was felt that Dysmas and Gestas were patriots fallen fighting for their country and this was a crime against the nation; but the slaughtering of this prophet who had done no harm and had cured the sick and – some said – raised the dead, was a crime against God. But it was only the Galileans who were really bitter, and it was in my mind to make capital of this, since there were so many in town, but Ezra would have none of it. ‘No speeching tonight. You’ve been in enough trouble.’
But when you’re in the mood I was in, you can’t rest. I bought some myrrh and aloes at one of the stalls in the spice market, and Ezra said: ‘What are those for?’ And I said: ‘For Dysmas and Gestas – I’ll go in the morning.’ And he said: ‘Leave it be; they are in the felons’ grave; if the soldiers catch you …’ ‘Why?’ I said, ‘there’s no law.’ ‘No, but they’ll seize the least excuse, and you’re in no state to hide your thoughts.’
On the way home who should join us but Simeon of Gilboa again, still wiping the snot on his sleeve, with news that Judas of Kerioth was also dead. It was said he’d done it himself, but I knew him better than that. Traitors never betray themselves: it’s the one and only thing you can trust about them. The holy man might be involved in all this mystical forgiveness – I’d seen his eyes yesterday morning – but not all his followers were of the same persuasion. One or other of them had seen to Judas. It was also said that the priests had moved in haste at the last because they had been told that an uprising was planned during the Passover while all the Galileans were in the city. I only wished it had been true. I still could not get it straight – why, having been to such pains to get him killed, the Sanhedrin, or some members of it, should have such care for his body. It didn’t make sense. It was a mystery that rubbed raw in my mind.
That night I slept badly, and with wild and terrible dreams. I woke in the very deep of the night and remembered that second meeting I had had with the other Jesus.
It had been while I was still hoping – now that Peter of Bethany was dead and so many Galileans killed by the Romans – that Jesus Bar-Joseph would be goaded into throwing in his lot with us. We had been alone for a few minutes, even Simon Peter out of the way; and to try to entice him, I’d listed how many things there were between him and me – things we had in common. The same given-name, the same purposes, the same age and size; but he had smiled and shaken his head. Brother, what a smile: it could have led a nation out of captivity. But all he said was: ‘My friend, your mission is of the sword. What would you gain if you gained all Israel?’ This seemed plain nonsense, and I said so. Then to challenge him again I said: ‘You speak of being Son of the Father. Well, that is my name too. Bar-Abbas means Son of the Father; have we not a common cause?’ But he turned it away again by telling me that I was really Son of the Fatherland, which of course is exactly what I have always claimed and got us no-where. What other meaning could there be? Then I looked at him and thought I perceived his other meaning.
‘Some say you claim to be the Son of God.’
‘I claim nothing.’
‘Then what are you?’
‘The Son of God.’
‘If that is not a claim …’
‘Truth is not a claim, Bar-Abbas. The stars are in the sky, the moon will rise, the seasons change; these are not claims, Jesus Bar-Abbas.’
I was turning away when he added in a gentle voice: ‘We are all sons of God, my friend.’ I scowled at him, seeing another sly evasion, and he added: ‘ You are the son of God: all men are the sons of God. All men bear within them the spirit of the Father. All men, Bar-Abbas, are born of the flesh and the spirit. They draw the temple of their body from the flesh of their mother on earth, and the spirit that inhabits the temple they draw from their Father in Heaven. This is a truth, Jesus Bar-Abbas, just as the stars are in the sky and the moon will rise.’
That night of the sixteenth Nizan as I lay in the dark on my pallet in the dark of the night, I thought of this for a long time. I remembered then I had said to him: ‘So you are as other men?’
‘No … I am not as other men.’
‘In what way do you differ?’
‘Not in the body.’
It had seemed the same old argument round in circles.
‘In the body and the spirit lie corruption and incorruption.’
‘And when you die?’
‘I shall ascend into Heaven. As we receive at birth, so we give at death: the body to the mother, the spirit to the Father, as we received them.’
There had been more of this stuff until Andrew of Bethsaida came in to break it up. I couldn’t remember it all, restless there in the dark, lying in the dark, months later, now the prophet was dead. He had said, what else had he said: ‘But no man shall live in the Father except through me.’ What did that mean? ‘If you love not your enemies as yourself you may not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’ This was insufferable nonsense, and I had stormed out.
I could rest no longer now, so got up and quietly dressed, thinking there were signs of the dawn. But it was only the cloudy moonlight, the Passover moon we had scarcely seen because of a week of heavy night cloud. I felt I must go out and smell the air.
The sound of Ezra’s two children; deep breaths in the night; creak of a board, hand brushing the wall; foot in the straw; out in the windy dust of the street I pulled my girdle tight against the chill. The anointing spices in one deep pocket, short staff in hand, dagger under belt.
The gates would be closed as yet, but I knew a way. You turned down an alley opposite the Shushan Gate and opened a door and squeezed through a long-dry drain and you came out between two rocks on the other side of the wall. From there it was five minutes’ walk.
But it seemed darker outside the city; the great clouds like a tent and the moon hiding and the wind blowing keen in your face. I stumbled once or twice on the boulders, and once a goat stared up at me like a white devil, standing on the limestone path in front of me, long faced and soulless.
As I got to the top I could see that all the cross-beams of the crosses were down; from here the felons’ grave was over the brow; and that must be a hint of dawn in the east, since the moon was now setting. I found the graves all right. They were only lightly filled in – a scattering of dry earth to keep the flies away, and in one shallow hole a knee and foot showed. I squatted beside it and shoved the earth away from where the head was likely to be, but the head I uncovered was a strange one and had been rotting there a week. I looked round and saw with disgust that there were eight or ten such graves, all in the same state. I hadn’t thought that so many others had died of
the same complaint and so recent; to find my friends meant a long and nasty search.
I sat for a time thinking, watching the dead light grow. Then I stood up. Friendship – well, it can go too far – and no good it would do them anyway. But there was one I could pay last respects to. Though not a friend. Never a friend. ‘Just as the stars are in the sky and the moon will rise …’
I shambled round the grisly skull of the hill and came to the cave-tomb from the east. The dawn was at my back. There was a great stone against the opening; but it was a different, more dignified resting place than a felon’s grave. It had dignity. What any patriot deserved. Much more than I should ever have had. I put my back against the stone and my feet against the wall and slowly heaved it away. It was a weight like the weight of the world.
When I’d done I wiped the cold sweat off my face and went in. They had laid him on a wooden trestle in the centre of the cave, and they’d swathed him in white clothes. The cave was low and I had to bend to go in farther. I must say I felt peculiar bending over him: you know, it was as if I was bending over another part of myself: as if the spirit in me had died and lay mummified in the compass of this dead rock. For a little I forgot the spices in my pocket; just for a little I had to see this other face. I dragged the cloths away, and it seemed to me suddenly that the cloths were not cold. I touched the face, and although it was cold I thought to myself that it was not cold enough. It was not cold enough for dead.
God, it was as if an earthquake had happened inside me. I didn’t think – not properly reason, that is – I didn’t think, but through me like a spear went words like: not dead – not dead but liveth – done to death by Sadducees – buried by Sadducees – but what now – what contrivance was this? – not dead but liveth – by whose grace does he live?
It didn’t ever make even as much sense as that; only one thought really came through – get him out of here – out of the cold of the tomb, out of the cold of death into the warmth of the living earth and the sun. Not caring about spirit or any of that side, not at the moment the spiritual; just life in the human body.
So I grabbed the body round the waist and carried it to the mouth of the cave-tomb. It was heavy with a dead weight, but I carried it just as easily as one carries the living. When I got to the entrance I saw that day had half come on us while I was inside, but still grey with cloud. The swifts were flying against the light of dawn. I stood with the weight on my shoulder looking round the hillside, trying to think what to do next. And then, in the silence, I heard a footstep …
… I leaned against the opening of the tomb and let the burden slide from my shoulders. I stood there frozen like a stiff one myself in the half light, and then a woman came round the side of the boulder. I just knew her, by her long black hair, even in that light. One of Jesus Bar-Joseph’s closest friends.
We saw each other more or less at the same second. I reckoned she had had much the same idea as myself, because she carried a bag that was probably spices and oils; but she dropped this on seeing me.
‘Mary,’ I said, ‘Mary of Magdala,’ and took a half-step, and then looked towards the burden I’d let slip down among the stones.
I think she couldn’t have seen this, because she suddenly collapsed to the ground herself and said only one word: ‘Rabboni!’ Rabboni: that means Master. I knew then that she’d made a mistake, and I mumbled: ‘No, Mary. Look again. But I believe your Jesus lives nevertheless …’ But before I could say more she had scrambled to her feet and was running away across the hillside like someone was after her. ‘Mary!’ I shouted. ‘Mary!’ But there was no stopping her.
It was quiet after that, and in the full dawn even the wind was quiet. Jerusalem was just below us on the side of the hill, smoke beginning to rise from some of the houses. To the right the Mount of Olives; beyond that the valley leading to Jordan. I bent and struggled the body of the prophet on to my shoulder again. It seemed to sigh as I picked it up.
With this on my shoulder, with this burden, I turned away from Jerusalem and began to tramp heavily downhill towards the road to Bethany. If Jesus Bar-Joseph was really still alive, this was the only safe place for him, not anywhere in Jerusalem. At Bethany he’d have a chance to get his wounds anointed and he could rest and stay hidden. I walked to the bottom of the hill, and then saw a group of pilgrims just emerging from the city gates on their way home after the feast. If I was seen it would mean trouble.
A hundred metres from the road, at the foot of the hill, there is a cave, another cave; so I turned in there and laid the prophet down on the ground, well towards the back where there was a stretch of fine gravel. And I crouched near the front to watch the pilgrims past. They were very slow in coming, walking with two asses, an old man bringing up the rear. But if there was hope for the prophet there would be need, and urgent need. I went back, into the shadowy back of the cave.
I looked at his face. I remembered it well. I looked at his face as if it was my face. Suffering had taken the lines away – or maybe they’d never been there. It hadn’t the lines mine had. Everything on mine showed, I sometimes thought: the danger, the combats, the scheming, the knife thrusts. His hadn’t got those lines. It was a face that had lost touch with earth. It was still like mine, but with all the evil gone. It was maybe like every man’s with all the evil gone. It was pale with the pallor of death and at the same time the pallor of purity.
The skin of the forehead was badly scratched, the hair matted over it. I pushed the hair away. The skin was cold, the mark of the scratches black, like writing on a scroll. I touched the skin again. It was cold – but was it cold enough? Had my sense of touch cheated me in the greater coldness of that other cave? Some of the wrappings of the body had fallen away in the tomb, but I pulled aside the rest and felt for the heart. There was no sign.
I squatted on my haunches and looked out and watched the pilgrims go past. But there would be others. Today of all days this road would be constantly peopled with pilgrims leaving the city. If he was dead I couldn’t take the body back, because I’d surely be seen now and I’d be condemned for defilement – by my own folk not by Rome. If I was to go on with the fight for our national freedom, I couldn’t afford this sort of blot on my reputation, that I’d taken the body of this holy man out of his tomb. If I left him here he might be found, or he might never be found.
But if he was not dead …
I thought I heard a sigh, and swung round in a flash to look at the body. It hadn’t moved, yet I felt as if something was about it – a ghost, or the ghost of a spirit, or the spirit of a man or the spirit of a god. I put my fingers again on the forehead, and this time it was more cold. I’ll swear there was a difference, as if the slight warmth of the day was showing up the utter coldness of the tomb. It was as if the last life was moving away, had moved away, had left while I squatted there muttering in the half dark.
A hell of a sadness came over me. I felt as if I’d lost something personal to myself – as if I’d lost the best that was in me, the best that was in all men. I knew now that in that moment when I’d thought him alive I’d wanted above all for him to live on. I’d wanted to carry him over my shoulder, wounded but triumphant, down the slope to Bethany. I wanted him to recover to lead our people, all people maybe, out of the valley of oppression and servitude, out of the valley of the shadow.
Just for a while I forgot my hatred of our oppressors, and my ambition to lead our nation out of its own servitude. It was as if I’d got my ideas crossed there in the cave, and for a while even national liberation wasn’t important measured against the importance of the man who had just gone.
Confused as I was, I felt I would have died in his place, instead of him in mine, if he could have gone on leading people the way he had been leading them, towards a new life.
Again I was full of a sense of disappointment – only this time it was much worse, much, much worse. I had thought I could bring him alive to Bethany. I had thought I was going to do that and now I could not. Maybe he h
ad been alive when I found him – the last spark lingering – but now the last spark had gone out.
I began to weep. Believe it or not, I sat down on a stone there in the mouth of the cave and blubbered like a child. I wept for myself and for my generation and for generations yet unborn. For there, it seemed to me, with or without the grace of God, went we all.
Copyright
First published in 1971 by Collins
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