The white prince was the first to advance. The infant had left the breast and was standing erect now on his mother’s knees. The prince took off his crown and laid it humbly at the baby’s feet. Next, the Negro slid forward on his knees, removed a fistful of emeralds and rubies from beneath his shirt and spread them with great tenderness over the tiny head. Lastly, the yellow man held out his hand and placed an armful of long peacock feathers at the child’s feet for him to play with… The baby looked at all three of the men and smiled at them, but did not put out his tiny hands to touch the presents.
Suddenly the three kings vanished and a young shepherd appeared, dressed in sheepskins and holding a tureen of warm milk between his hands. As soon as the infant saw the milk he danced upon his mother’s knees, bent his little face down into the tureen and began to drink the milk, insatiably, happily…
Leaning against the doorpost, the mother recalled the limitless dream, and sighed. What hopes this only son had given her, what wonders the sorcerers had prophesied for him! Had not the old rabbi himself gazed at him, opened the Scriptures, read the prophets over the tiny head and searched the infant’s chest, eyes, even the soles of his feet, to find a sign? But alas! as time went on her hopes withered and fell. Her son had chosen an evil road, a road which led him further and further from the ways of men.
She secured her kerchief tightly and bolted the door. Then she too began to mount the hill. She was going to see the crucifixion-to make the time go by.
Chapter Four
THE MOTHER MARCHED and marched, hurrying to slide in among the crowd and disappear. She heard the screeching of the women in front; behind them were the panting, exasperated men, barefooted, with uncombed hair and unwashed bodies, their daggers thrust deep down under their shirts. The old men followed, and still farther back came the lame, the blind and the maimed. The earth crumbled under the people’s feet, the dust flew up in clouds, the air reeked. Above, the sun had already begun to burn furiously.
An old woman looked around, saw Mary, and cursed. Two neighbors turned away their faces and spit in order to exorcise the ill omen; shuddering, a newly married girl gathered together her skirts lest the mother of the cross-maker touch them as she passed. Mary sighed and enclosed herself securely in her violet kerchief, leaving visible only her reproachful almond-shaped eyes and her closed, bitter mouth. Stumbling over the rocks, she proceeded all alone, hurrying to hide, to disappear within the crowd. Whispers broke forth all around her, but she fortified her heart and proceeded. What has my son descended to, she was thinking, my son, my son, my darling!… She proceeded, biting the edge of her kerchief to keep herself. from bursting into tears.
She reached the mass of people, left the men behind her, slid in among the women and hid herself. She had placed her palm over her mouth-only her eyes were visible now. None of my neighbors will recognize me, she said to herself, and she grew calm.
Suddenly there was a great din behind her. The men had gathered momentum; they were pushing their way through the mass of women in order to take the lead. The barracks where the Zealot was imprisoned were close by now, and they were impatient to smash down the door and free the captive. Mary stepped to one side, concealed herself in a well-hidden doorway, and looked: long greasy beards, long greasy hair, frothing mouths; and the rabbi, mounted on the shoulders of a giant with a savage expression, waving his arms toward heaven and shouting. Shouting what? Mary cocked her ear, and heard.
“My children, have faith in the people of Israel. Forward-all together. Do not be afraid. Rome is smoke. God will puff and blow her away! Remember the Maccabees, remember how they expelled the Greeks, the rulers of the whole world, how they put them to shame! In the same way we shall expel the Romans, we shall put them to shame. There is only one Lord of Hosts, and he is our God!”
Swept away in a divine ecstasy, the old rabbi jumped and danced upon the giant’s broad shoulders. He had grown old, devoured by fasts, prostrations and great hopes, and had no strength to run. The huge-bodied mountaineer had grabbed him and was running with him now in front of the people, waving him back and forth like a banner.
“Hey, you’ll drop him, Barabbas,” the people shouted.
But Barabbas advanced without the slightest worry, tossing and dandling the old man on his shoulders.
The people were crying for God. The air above their heads caught fire, flames bounded forth and joined heaven to earth. Their minds reeled: this world of stones, grass and flesh thinned out, became transparent, and the next world appeared behind it, composed of flames and angels.
Judas caught fire. Thrusting forward his arms, he snatched the old rabbi from Barabbas’s shoulders, threw him astride his own and began to bellow: “Today! Not tomorrow, today!” The rabbi ignited in his turn and began to sing the psalm of victory in his high voice, the voice of a man with one foot in the grave. In a moment, the entire people intoned:
The nations compassed me about; in the name of my
God I disperse them!
The nations girded me round; in the name of my
God I disperse them!
They encircled me like wasps; in the name of my
God I disperse them!
But while they sang, scattering the nations in their minds, the enemy fortress suddenly loomed before them in the heart of Nazareth: square, stoutly built, with four corners, four towers, four enormous bronze eagles. The devil inhabited every inch of these barracks. At the very top, above the towers, were the yellow and black eagle-bearing Roman standards; below these, Rufus, the bloodthirsty centurion of Nazareth, with his army; still lower, the horses, dogs, camels and slaves; and lower yet, thrust in a deep, dried-out well, his hair untouched by shears, his lips by wine, his body by women-the Zealot. This rebel would but toss his head, and men, slaves, horses, towers-all the accursed levels above him-would come tumbling down. God always works in this way. Deep in the foundations of wrong he buries the small despised cry of justice.
This Zealot was the last of the long lineage of the Maccabees. The God of Israel had held his hand over his head and kept the sacred seed from perishing. One night Herod the aged king of Judea-a wicked, damnable traitor!-had smeared forty adolescents with tar and ignited them as torches because they had pulled down the golden eagle he had fastened to the previously unsoiled lintel of the Temple. Of the forty-one conspirators, forty were caught, but the leader escaped. The God of Israel had seized him by the hair of his head and saved him, and this was this Zealot, the great-great-grandson of the Maccabees, a handsome adolescent at the time, with cheeks still covered with fuzz.
For years after that he roamed the mountains, fighting to liberate the holy soil which God had presented to Israel. “We have only one master-Adonai,” he used to proclaim. “Do not pay poll tax to the earthly magistrates, do not suffer their eagle-shaped idols to soil God’s Temple, do not slaughter oxen and sheep as sacrifices for the tyrant emperor! There is one God, our God; there is one people, the people of Israel; there is but one fruit on the entire tree of the earth-the Messiah.”
But suddenly the God of Israel drew his hand away from him and he was captured by Rufus, the centurion of Nazareth. Peasants, workers and proprietors had set out en masse from all the near-by villages; fishermen had come from the lake of Gennesaret. For days and days now an obscure, cross-eyed, doubled-sensed message had been leaping from house to house, fishing boat to fishing boat, and also catching passers-by on the road: “They’re crucifying the Zealot; he’s done for too-finished!” But at other times the message was: “Greetings, brothers, the Saviour has come! Take large date branches and forward, all together-march to Nazareth to welcome him!”