The old rabbi was very tired. He had lain down again on his bed, but his mind was wide open: he saw and heard everything. He had made his decision now and felt tranquil. A voice rose up within him-his own? God’s? perhaps it was both-and commanded him: Simeon, wherever he goes, follow him!
Peter prepared to reopen his mouth. He had more to tell, but Jesus put out his hand. “That’s enough!” he said.
He got up. Jerusalem rose up before his eyes: savage, full of blood and at the height of despair-which is where hope begins. Capernaum vanished along with its simple fishermen and peasants. The lake of Gennesaret sank away within him. Zebedee’s house narrowed-the four walls approached each other and touched him. Suffocating, he went and opened the door.
Why did he stay here and eat, drink, have the fire lighted for him and the table set noon and night? He was spending his time aimlessly. Was this how he intended to save the world? Wasn’t he ashamed of himself?
He went into the yard. There was a warm wind which carried the smell of budding trees. The stars were strings of pearls around the neck and arms of the night. Below, at his feet, the earth tingled as though countless mouths were suckling at its breasts.
He turned his face toward the south, toward holy Jerusalem. He seemed to be listening intently and to be trying in the darkness to discern her hard face of blood-stained stones. And while his mind, ardent and despairing, flowed like a river past mountain and plain and was at last about to touch the holy city, suddenly it seemed to him that he saw a huge shadow stir in the yard under the budding almond tree. All at once something darker than night itself (that was how he was able to distinguish it) arose in the black air. It was his gigantic fellow voyager. In the still night he could clearly hear her deep breathing, but he was not afraid. Time had accustomed him to her breath. He waited, and then slowly, commandingly, a tranquil voice from under the almond tree said, “Let us go!”
John had appeared at the doorway, troubled. He thought he heard a voice in the darkness. “Rabbi,” he whispered, “whom are you talking to?”
But Jesus entered the house, put out his hand and took his shepherd’s staff from the corner.
“Friends,” he said, “let us go!” He marched toward the door without looking back to see if anyone was following him.
The old rabbi jumped out of his bed, tightened his belt and seized his crosier. “I’m coming with you, my child,” he said, and he was the first to start for the door.
Old Salome was spinning. She rose also. She placed the distaff on her trunk and said, “I’m coming too. Zebedee, I leave you the keys. Farewell!” She unbelted the keys from around her waist and surrendered them to her husband. Then she wrapped herself tightly in her kerchief, surveyed her home and with a nod of her head bid it goodbye. Her heart had suddenly become that of a twenty-year-old girl.
Magdalene rose also, silent and happy. The agitated disciples got up and looked at each other.
“Where are we headed?” asked Thomas, hooking his horn onto his belt.
“At this time of night? Why in such a hurry? Won’t tomorrow morning do?” said Nathanael, and he glanced sullenly at Philip.
But Jesus, with long strides, had already passed through the yard and begun his march toward the south.
Chapter Twenty-Five
THE FOUNDATIONS of the world were shaken because man’s heart was shaken, crushed under the stones which men called Jerusalem, under the prophecies, the Second Comings, the anathemas, under the Pharisees and Sadducees, the rich who ate, the poor who were hungry, and under the Lord Jehovah, from whose beard and mustaches the blood of mankind had been running for centuries upon centuries into the abyss. No matter where you touched this God, he bellowed. If you said a kind word to him he lifted his fist and shouted, “I want meat.” If you offered a lamb or your firstborn son as a sacrifice, he screamed, “I don’t want meat. Do not rend your clothes; rend your hearts. Turn your flesh into spirit, your spirit into prayer, and scatter it to the winds!”
Man’s heart was crushed under the six hundred thirteen written commandments of the Hebrew Law, plus the thousands of unwritten ones-yet it did not stir; under Genesis, Leviticus, Numbers, judges and Kings-yet it did not stir. And then suddenly at the most unexpected moment a light breeze blew, not from heaven, but from below, on earth, and all the chambers of man’s heart were shaken. Straightway Judges, Kings, the prophecies, anathemas, Pharisees, Sadducees and the stones which men call Jerusalem cracked, tottered and began to tumble down-at first within the heart, then in the mind and finally upon the earth itself. Haughty Jehovah once again tied on his leather master craftsman’s apron, once again took up his level and rule, went down to earth and personally began to help demolish the past and build the future along with men. But before anything else, he began the Temple of the Jews at Jerusalem.
Jesus went every day and stood on the blood-sprinkled paving stones. He looked at this overloaded Temple and felt his heart hammer against it to pull it down. It continued to stand, however, gleaming in the sun like a golden-horned garlanded bull. The walls were veneered right up to the roof in white marble streaked with sea blue: the Temple seemed to float upon a turbulent ocean. In front of him hung three tiers of chambers, one on top of the next. The lowest and widest was for the idolators, the middle one was for the people of Israel, and the highest for the twenty thousand Levites who washed and sandpapered, lighted and extinguished the lamps and cleaned the Temple. Day and night seven kinds of incense were burned. The smoke was so thick that the goats sneezed seven miles away.
The humble ark which enclosed the Law, the ancestral ark their nomadic forefathers had transported across the desert, had moored itself to this summit of Zion, put out roots, sprouted up, dressed itself in cypress wood, gold and marble and become a Temple. At first the savage desert God did not deign to inhabit a house, but so much did he like the smell of the cypress wood and incense and the savor from the slaughtered beasts that one day he lifted his foot and entered.
It was now two months since Jesus’ arrival from Capernaum. Each day he went and stood in front of the Temple and looked at it; each day he seemed to see it for the first time. It was as though each morning he expected to find it crumbled to the ground and to be able to trample over it from end to end. He had no desire to see it any longer, nor did he fear it. In his heart it had already been destroyed. One day when the old rabbi asked him why he did not go in to worship, he shook his head and answered, “For years I circled the Temple; now the Temple is circling me.”
“Jesus, those are boastful words,” the rabbi objected, thrusting his aged head against his breast. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“When I say ‘I,’ ” Jesus answered, “I do not speak of this body-which is dust; I do not speak of the son of Mary-he too is dust, with just a tiny, tiny spark of fire. ‘I’ from my mouth, Rabbi, means God.”
“That is a still more terrible blasphemy!” cried the rabbi, covering his face.
“I am Saint Blasphemer, and don’t forget it,” Jesus replied with a laugh.
One day when he saw his disciples standing before the imposing building in open-mouthed admiration, he became angry. “You find the Temple astonishing, don’t you?” he said to them sarcastically. “How many years were needed to build it? Twenty years? Ten thousand workmen? In three days I shall destroy it. Regard it well-for the last time. Say goodbye to it, for there shall not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down!”