And then, while he was bowed over and weeping, a pleasant breeze blew, the stench of the tar and the carcass disappeared and a sweet perfume pervaded the world. The eremite heard water, bracelets and laughter jingling in the distance and approaching. His eyelids, armpits and throat felt refreshed. He lifted his eyes. On a stone in front of him a snake with the eyes and breasts of a woman was licking its lips and regarding him. The eremite stepped back, terrified. Was this a snake, a woman, or a cunning demon of the desert? Such a serpent had wrapped itself around the forbidden tree of Paradise and seduced the first man and woman to unite and give birth to sin. ... He heard laughter and the sweet, wheedling voice of a woman: “I felt sorry for you, son of Mary. You cried, ‘I don’t want to be alone. Help me!’ I pitied you and came. What can I do for you?”
“I don’t want you. I didn’t call you. Who are you?”
“Your soul.”
“My soul!” Jesus exclaimed, and he closed his eyes, horrified.
“Yes, your soul. You are afraid of being alone. Your great-grandfather Adam had the same fear. He too shouted for help. His flesh and soul united, and woman emerged from his rib to keep him company.”
“I don’t want you, don’t want you! I remember the apple you fed to Adam. I remember the angel with the scimitar!”
“You remember, and that’s why you’re in pain and you cry out and cannot find your way. I shall show it to you. Give me your hand. Don’t look back; don’t recall anything. See how my breasts take the lead. Follow them, my spouse. They know the way perfectly.”
“You are going to lead me also to sweet sin and the Inferno. I’m not coming. Mine is another road.”
The serpent giggled derisively and showed her sharp, poisonous teeth. “Do you wish to follow God’s tracks, the tracks of the eagle—you worm! You, son of the Carpenter, wish to bear the sins of an entire race! Aren’t your own sins enough for you? What impudence to think that it’s your duty to save the world!”
She’s right ... she’s right ... the eremite thought, trembling. What impudence to wish to save the world!
“I have a secret to tell you, dear son of Mary,” said the snake in a sweet voice, her eyes sparkling. She slid down from the rock like water and began, richly decorated, to roll toward him. She arrived at his feet, climbed onto his knees, curled herself up and with a spring reached his thighs, loins, breast and finally leaned against his shoulder. The eremite, despite himself, inclined his head to hear her. The snake licked Jesus’ ear with her tongue. Her voice was seductive and far away: it seemed to be coming from Galilee, from the edge of Lake Gennesaret.
“It’s Magdalene ... it’s Magdalene ... it’s Magdalene ...”
“What?” said Jesus, shuddering. “What about Magdalene?”
“... it’s Magdalene you must save!” the snake hissed imperatively. “Not the Earth—forget about the Earth. It’s her, Magdalene, you must save!”
Jesus tried to shake the serpent away from his head, but she thrust herself forward and vibrated her tongue in his ear. “Her body is beautiful, cool and accomplished. All nations have passed over her, but it has been written in God’s hand since your childhood that she is for you. Take her! God created man and woman to match, like the key and the lock. Open her. Your children sit huddled together and numb inside her, waiting for you to blow away their numbness so that they may rise and come out to walk in the sun. ... Do you hear what I’m telling you? Lift your eyes, give me some sign. Just nod your head, my darling, and this very hour I shall bring you, on a fresh bed—your wife.”
“My wife?”
“Your wife. Look how God married the whore Jerusalem. The nations passed over her, but he married her to save her. Look how the prophet Hosea married the whore Gomer, daughter of Debelaim. In the same way, God commands you to sleep with Mary Magdalene, your wife, to have children, and save her.”
The serpent had now pressed its hard, cool, round breast against Jesus’ own and was sliding slowly, tortuously, wrapping itself around him. Jesus grew pale, closed his eyes, saw Magdalene’s firm, high-rumped body wriggling along the shores of Lake Gennesaret, saw her gaze toward the river Jordan and sigh. She extended her hand—she was seeking him; and her bosom was filled with children: his own. He had only to twitch the corner of his eye, to give a sign, and all at once: what happiness! How his life would change, sweeten, become more human! This was the way, this! He would return to Nazareth, to his mother’s house, would become reconciled with his brothers. It was nothing but youthful folly—madness—to want to save the world and die for mankind. But thanks to Magdalene, God bless her, he would be cured; he would return to his workshop, take up once more his old beloved craft, once more make plows, cradles and troughs; he would have children and become a human being, the master of a household. The peasants would respect him and stand up when he passed. He would work the whole week long and on Saturday go to the synagogue in the clean garments woven for him of linen and silk by his wife Magdalene, with his expensive kerchief over his head, his golden wedding ring on his finger; and he would have his stall with the elders, would sit and listen peacefully and indifferently while the seething, half-insane Scribes and Pharisees sweated and shivered to interpret the Holy Scriptures. He would snigger and look at them with sympathy. Where would they ever end up, these theologians! He was interpreting Holy Scripture quietly and surely by taking a wife, having children, by constructing plows, cradles, and troughs. ...
He opened his eyes and saw the desert. Where had the day gone! The sun was once more inclining toward the horizon. The serpent, her breast glued to his own, was waiting. She hissed tranquilly, seductively, and a tender, plaintive lullaby flowed into the evening air. The entire desert rocked and lullabied like a mother.
“I’m waiting ... I’m waiting ...” the snake hissed salaciously. “Night has overtaken us. I’m cold. Decide. Nod to me, and the doors of Paradise will be opened to you. Decide, my darling. Magdalene is waiting. ...”
The eremite felt paralyzed with fear. As he was about to open his mouth to say Yes, he felt someone above looking down on him. Terrified, he lifted his head and saw two eyes in the air, two eyes only, as black as night, and two white eyebrows which were moving and signaling to him: No! No! No! Jesus’ heart contracted. He looked up again beseechingly, as if he wished to scream: Leave me alone, give me permission, do not be angry! But the eyes had grown ferocious and the eyebrows vibrated threateningly.
“No! No! No!” Jesus then shouted, and two large tears rolled from his eyes.
All at once the serpent writhed, unglued herself from him and with a muffled roar exploded. The air was glutted with the stench.
Jesus fell on his face. His mouth, nostrils and eyes filled with sand. His mind was blank. Forgetting his hunger and thirst, he wept—wept as though his wife and all his children had died, as though his whole life had been ruined.
“Lord, Lord,” he murmured, biting the sand, “Father, have you no mercy? Your will be done: how many times have I said this to you until now, how many times shall I say it in the future? All my life I shall quiver, resist and say it: Your will be done!”
In this way, murmuring and swallowing the sand, he fell asleep; and as the eyes of his body closed, those of his soul opened and he saw the specter of a serpent as thick as the body of a man and extending in length from one end of the night to the other. She was stretched out on the sand with her wide, bright-red mouth opened at his side. Opposite this mouth hopped an ornate, trembling partridge struggling in vain to open its wings and escape. It staggered forward uttering small, weak cries, its feathers raised out of fear. The motionless serpent kept her eyes glued on it, her mouth opened. She was in no hurry, for she was sure of her prey. The partridge advanced little by little directly toward the opened mouth, stumbling on its crooked legs. Jesus stood still and watched, trembling like the partridge. At daybreak the bird had at last reached the gaping mouth. It quivered for a moment, glanced quickly around as though seeking aid; then suddenly stretch
ed forth its neck and entered head first, feet together. The mouth closed. Jesus was able to see the partridge, a ball of feathers and meat and ruby-colored feet, descend little by little toward the dragon’s belly.
He jumped up, terrified. The desert was a mass of swelling rose-colored waves.
The sun was rising. “It is God,” he murmured, trembling. “And the partridge is ...
His voice broke. He did not have the strength to complete his reflection. But inside himself he thought: ... man’s soul. The partridge is man’s soul!
He remained plunged in this reflection for hours. The sun came up, set the sand on fire; it pierced Jesus’ scalp, went inside him and parched his mind, throat and breast. His entrails were suspended like bunches of left-over grapes after the autumn vintage. His tongue had stuck to his palate, his skin was peeling off, his bones emerging; and his fingertips had turned completely blue.
Time, within him, had become as small as a heartbeat, as large as death. He was no longer hungry or thirsty; he no longer desired children and a wife. His whole soul had squeezed into his eyes. He saw—that was all: he saw. But at precisely noon his sight grew dim; the world vanished and a gigantic mouth gaped somewhere in front of him, its lower jaw the earth, its upper jaw the skies. Trembling, he dragged himself slowly forward toward the opened mouth, his neck stretched forward. ...
The days and nights went by like flashes of white and black lightning. One midnight a lion came and stood in front of him, proudly shaking its mane. Its voice was like a man’s: “Welcome to my lair, victorious ascetic. I salute the man who conquered the minor virtues, the small joys, and happiness! We don’t like what’s easy and sure; our sights are on difficult things. Magdalene isn’t a big enough wife for us: we wish to marry the entire Earth. Bridegroom, the bride has sighed, the lamps of the heavens are lighted, the guests have arrived: let us go.”
“Who are you?”
“Yourself—the hungry lion inside your heart and loins that at night prowls around the sheepfolds, the kingdoms of this world, and weighs whether or not to jump in and eat. I rush from Babylon to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Alexandria, from Alexandria to Rome, shouting: I am hungry; everything is mine! At daybreak I re-enter your breast and shrink; the terrifying lion becomes a lamb. I play at being the humble ascetic who desires nothing, who seems able to live on a grain of wheat, a sip of water and on a naïve, accommodating God whom he tries to flatter with the name of Father. But secretly, in my heart, I am ashamed; I grow fierce and yearn for nightfall when I can throw off my sheepskin and begin once more to roar, roam the night and stamp my four feet down on Babylon, Jerusalem, Alexandria and Rome.”
“I don’t know who you are. I never desired the kingdom of this world. The kingdom of heaven is sufficient for me.”
“It is not. You deceive yourself, friend. It is not sufficient for you. You don’t dare gaze within yourself, deep within your loins and heart—to find me. ... Why do you look askance and think ill of me? Do you believe I am Temptation, an emissary of the Sly One, come to mislead you? You brainless hermit, what strength can external temptation have? The fortress is taken only from within. I am the deepest voice of your deepest self; I am the lion within you. You have wrapped yourself in the skin of a lamb to encourage men to approach you, so that you can devour them. Remember, when you were a small child a Chaldean sorceress looked at your palm. ‘I see many stars,’ she said, ‘many crosses. You shall become king.’ Why do you pretend to forget? You remember it day and night. Rise, son of David, and enter your kingdom!”
Jesus listened with bowed head. Little by little he recognized the voice, little by little he recalled having heard it sometimes in his dreams and once when he was a child and Judas had thrashed him, and one other time when he had left his house and roamed the fields for days and nights pinched by hunger, then returned shamefully home, to be greeted with hoots by his brothers, lame Simon and pious Jacob, who were standing in the doorway. Then, truly, he had heard the lion roar inside him. ... And only the other day, when he carried the cross to the Zealot’s crucifixion and passed before the stormy crowd, everyone looking at him with disgust and moving out of his path, the lion had again jumped up within him, and with such force that he was thrown down.
And now, in this forsaken midnight—look! The bellowing lion inside him had come out and stood before him. It rubbed itself against him, vanished and reappeared, as though going in and out of him, and playfully tapped him with its tail. ... Jesus felt his heart grow more and more ferocious. The lion is really right, he thought. I’ve had enough of all this. I’m fed up with being hungry, with wanting to play at humility, with offering the other cheek only to get it slapped. I’m tired of flattering this man-eating God with the name of Father in order to cajole him to be more gentle; tired of hearing my brothers curse me, my mother weep, men laugh when I go by; sick of going barefooted, of not being able to buy the honey, wine and women I see when I pass by the market, and of finding courage only in my sleep to have God bring them to me, so that I can taste and embrace the empty air! I’m sick of it all! I shall rise, gird myself with the ancestral sword—am I not the son of David?—and enter my kingdom! The lion is right. Enough of ideas and clouds and kingdoms of heaven. Stones and soil and flesh—that is my kingdom!
He rose. Somewhere he found the strength to jump up and gird himself, gird himself interminably with an invisible sword, bellowing like a lion. He was ready. “Forward!” he cried. He turned, but the lion had disappeared. He heard pulsating laughter above him and a voice: “Look!” A flash of lightning knifed through the night and stood fixed, motionless. Under it were cities with walls and towers, houses, roads, squares, people; and all around, plains, mountains, sea. Babylon was to the right, Jerusalem and Alexandria to the left, and across the sea was Rome. Once more he heard the voice: “Look!”
Jesus raised his eyes. A yellow-winged angel dropped headfirst from the sky. Lamentations were heard: in the four kingdoms the people lifted their arms to heaven, but their hands fell off, gnawed away by leprosy. They parted their lips to cry Help! and their lips fell, devoured by leprosy. The streets filled with hands and noses and mouths.
And while Jesus cried with upraised arms, “Mercy, Lord, have pity on mankind!” a second angel, dapple-winged, with bells around his feet and neck, fell headfirst from heaven. All at once laughter and guffawing broke out over the entire earth: struck down by madness, the lepers were running helter-skelter. Whatever remained of their bodies had burst into peals of laughter.
Trembling, Jesus blocked his ears so that he would not hear. And then a third angel, red-winged, fell like a meteor from the sky. Four fountains of fire rose up, four columns of smoke, and the stars were extinguished for want of air. A light breeze blew, scattering the fumes. Jesus looked. The four kingdoms had become four handfuls of ashes.
The voice sounded once more: “These, wretch, are the kingdoms of this world which you are setting out to possess; and those are my three beloved angels: Leprosy, Madness and Fire. The day of the Lord has come—my day, mine!” With this last clap of thunder the lightning disappeared.
The dawn found Jesus with his face plunged in the sand. During the night he must have rolled off his stone and wept and wept, for his eyes were swollen and smarting. He looked around him. Could this endless sand be his soul? The desert was shifting, coming to life. He heard shrill cries, mocking laughter, weeping. Small animals resembling rabbits, squirrels and weasels, all with ruby-red eyes, were hopping toward him. It is Madness, he thought, Madness, come to devour me. He cried out, and the animals disappeared; an archangel with the half moon suspended from his neck and a joyous star between his eyebrows towered up before him and unfurled his green wings.
Jesus shaded his eyes against the dazzling light. “Archangel,” he whispered.
The archangel closed his wings and smiled. “Don’t you recognize me?” he said. “Don’t you remember me?”
“No, no! Who are you? Go farther away, Archangel. You’re blindi
ng me.”
“Do you remember when you were a small child still unable to walk, you clung to the door of your house and to your mother’s clothes so that you would not fall, and shouted within yourself, shouted loudly, ‘God, make me God! God, make me God! God, make me God!’ ”
“Don’t remind me of that shameless blasphemy. I remember it!”
“I am that inner voice. I shouted then; I shout still, but you’re afraid and pretend not to hear. Now, however, you are going to listen to me, like it or not. The hour has come. I chose you before you were born—you, out of the whole of mankind. I work and gleam within you, prevent you from falling into the minor virtues, the small pleasures, into happiness. Behold how just now when Woman came into the desert where I brought you, I banished her. The kingdoms came, and I banished them. I did, I, not you. I am reserving you for a destiny much more important, much more difficult.