The Last Temptation of Christ

  “There are many people dressed in rags, Captain, many who go barefooted, many carpenters. Give us a clue who he is, what he looks like and where he lives, so that we’ll be able to recognize him. Otherwise we’re not budging. You’d better know that, Captain. We’re not budging; we’re tired out.”

  “I shall hug him to my bosom and kiss him. That will be your clue. Forward now; run! But quiet, don’t shout. Right now he’s sleeping. Take care he doesn’t wake up and escape us. In God’s name, lads, after him!”

  “After him, Captain!” shouted the dwarfs in unison, and they raised their big feet, ready to start.

  But one of them, the skinny, cross-eyed hunchback who held the crown of thorns, clutched a prickly shrub and resisted.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he screamed. “I’m fed up! How many nights have we been hunting him? How many countries and villages have we tramped through? Count: in the desert of Idumea we searched the monasteries of the Essenes one after the other; we went through Bethany, where we practically murdered poor Lazarus to no avail; we reached the Jordan, but the Baptist sent us away, saying, ‘I’m not the One you seek, so be off with you!’ We left and entered Jerusalem, searched the Temple, the palaces of Annas and Caiaphas, the cottages of the Scribes and Pharisees: no one! No one but scoundrels, liars, robbers, prostitutes, murderers! We left again. We raced through Samaria the excommunicate and reached Galilee. In one lump we took in Magdala, Cana, Capernaum, Bethsaida. From but to hut, caïque to caïque, we searched for the most virtuous, the most God-fearing. Every time we found him we cried, ‘You’re the One, why are you hiding? Arise and save Israel!’ But as soon as he saw the tools we carried, his blood ran cold. He kicked, stamped, shrieked, ‘It’s not me, not me!’ and threw himself into a life of wine, gambling and women in order to save himself. He became drunk, he blasphemed, he whored—just to make us see he was a sinner and not the One we sought. ... I’m sorry, Captain, but we’ll meet up with the same thing here. Were chasing him in vain. We won’t find him: he still has not been born.”

  The redbeard grabbed him by the nape of the neck and held him dangling in the air for a long moment. “Doubting Thomas,” he said, laughing, “doubting Thomas, I like you!”

  He turned to the others. “He is the ox goad, we the laboring beasts. Let him prick us, let him prick us so that we may never find peace.”

  Hairless Thomas screeched with pain; the redbeard set him down on the ground. Laughing again, he swept his eyes over the heterogeneous company. “How many are we?” he asked. “Twelve—one from each of the tribes of Israel. Devils, angels, imps, dwarfs: all the births and abortions of God. Take your pick!”

  He was in a good mood; his round, hawk-like eyes flashed. Stretching out his great hand, he began to grip the companions angrily, tenderly, by the shoulder. One by one, he held them dangling in the air while he examined them from top to bottom, laughing. As soon as he released one, he grabbed another.

  “Hello, skinflint, venom nose, profit-mad immortal son of Abraham. ... And you, dare-devil, chatterbox, gobble-jaws. ... And you, pious milktoast: you don’t murder, steal or commit adultery—because you are afraid. All your virtues are daughters of fear … And you, simple donkey that they break with beating: you carry on, you carry on despite hunger, thirst, cold, and the whip. Laborious, careless of your self-respect, you lick the bottom of the saucepan. All your virtues are daughters of poverty. ... And you, sly fox: you stand outside the den of the lion, the den of Jehovah, and do not go in. ... And you, naïve sheep: you bleat and follow a God who is going to eat you. ... And you, son of Levi: quack, God-peddler who sells the Lord by the ounce, innkeeper who stands men God as a drink so that they will become tipsy and open their purses to you and their hearts—you rascal of rascals! ... And you, malicious, fanatical, headstrong ascetic: you look at your own face and manufacture a God who is malicious, fanatical and headstrong. Then you prostrate yourself and worship him because he resembles you. ... And you whose immortal soul opened a money-changing shop: you sit on the threshold, plunge your hand into the sack, give alms to the poor, lend to God. You keep a ledger and write: I gave so many florins for charity to so and so on such and such a day, at such and such an hour. You leave instructions for the ledger to be put in your coffin so that you will be able to open it in front of God, present your bill and collect the immortal millions. ... And you, liar, teller of tall tales: you trample all the Lord’s commandments underfoot, you murder, steal, commit adultery, and afterward break into tears, beat your breast, take down your guitar and turn the sin into a song. Shrewd devil, you know very well that God pardons singers no matter what they do, because he can simply die for a song. ... And you, Thomas, sharp ox goad in our rumps. ... And me, me: crazy irresponsible fool, I got a swelled head and left my wife and children in order to search for the Messiah! All of us together—devils, angels, imps, dwarfs—we’re all needed in our great cause! ... After him, lads!”

  He laughed, spit into his palms and moved his big feet.

  “After him, lads!” he shouted again, and he started at a run down the slope leading to Nazareth.

  Mountains and men became smoke and disappeared. The sleeper’s eyes filled with dreamless murk. Now, at last, he heard nothing in his endless sleep but huge heavy feet stamping on the mountain and descending.

  His heart pounded wildly. He heard a piercing cry deep within his bowels: They’re coming! They’re coming! Jumping up with a start (so it seemed to him in his sleep), he blockaded the door with his workbench and piled all his tools on top—his saws, jack and block planes, adzes, hammers, screwdrivers—and also a massive cross which he was working on at the time. Then he sheathed himself again in his wood shavings and chips, to wait.

  There was a strange, disquieting calm-thick, suffocating. He heard nothing, not even the villagers’ breathing, much less God’s. Everything, even the vigilant devil, had sunk into a dark, fathomless, dried-up well. Was this sleep? Or death, immortality, God? The young man became terrified, saw the danger, tried with all his might to reach his drowning mind to save himself—and woke up.

  He was soaked in sweat. He remembered nothing from the dream. Only this: someone was hunting him. Who? ... One? Many? ... Men? Devils? He could not recall. He cocked his ear and listened. The village’s respiration could be heard now in the quiet of the night: the breathing of many breasts, many souls. A dog barked mournfully; from time to time a tree rustled in the wind. A mother at the edge of the village lulled her child to sleep, slowly, movingly. ... The night filled with murmurs and sighs which he knew and loved. The earth was speaking, God was speaking, and the young man grew calm. For a moment he had feared he remained all alone in the world.

  He heard his old father’s gasps from the room where his parents slept, which was next to his own. The unfortunate man could not sleep. He was contorting his mouth and laboriously opening and closing his lips in an effort to speak. For years he had been tormenting himself in this way, struggling to emit a human sound, but he sat paralyzed on his bed, unable to control his tongue. He toiled, sweated, driveled at the mouth, and now and then after a terrible contest he managed to put together one word by voicing each syllable separately, desperately—one word, one only, always the same: A-do-na-i, Adonai. Nothing else, only Adonai. ... And when he finished this entire word he would remain tranquil for an hour or two until the struggle again gripped him and he began once more to open and close his mouth.

  “It’s my fault ... my fault ...” murmured the young man, his eyes filling with tears.

  In the silence of the night the son heard his father’s anguish and he too, overcome with anguish, began involuntarily to sweat and open and close his lips. Shutting his eyes, he listened to what his father did so that he could do the same. Together with the old man, he sighed, uttered desperate, inarticulate cries—and while doing this, slept once more.

  But as soon as sleep came over him again the house shook violently, the workbench toppled over, tools and cross rolled to the flo
or, the door opened and the redbeard towered on the threshold, immense, laughing wildly, his arms spread wide.

  The young man cried out, and awoke.

  HE SAT UP on the wood shavings and propped his back against the wall. A strap studded with two rows of sharp nails was hanging above his head. Every evening before he slept he lashed and bled his body so that he would remain tranquil during the night and not act insolently. A light tremor had seized him. He could not remember what temptations had come again in his sleep, but he felt that he had escaped a great danger. “I cannot bear any more; I’ve had enough,” he murmured, raising his eyes to heaven and sighing. The newborn light, uncertain and pale, slid through the cracks of the door and gave the soft yellow canework of the ceiling a strange, glazed sweetness, precious, like ivory. “I cannot bear any more; I’ve had enough,” he murmured again, clenching his teeth with indignation. He riveted his eyes upon the air, and suddenly his whole life passed before him: his father’s staff which had blossomed on the day of his engagement, then the lightning flash which struck the engaged man and paralyzed him; afterward how his mother stared at him, her own son, stared at him, saying nothing. But he heard her mute complaint—she was right! Night and day his sins were knives in his heart. He had fought in vain those last few years to vanquish Fear, the only one of the devils which remained. The others he had conquered: poverty, desire for women, the joys of youth, the happiness of the hearth. He had conquered them all—all except Fear. If only this might be conquered too, if only he were able ... He was a man now: the hour had come.

  “My father’s paralysis is my fault,” he murmured. “It’s my fault that Magdalene descended to prostitution; it’s my fault that Israel still groans under the yoke. ...”

  A cock—it must have been from the adjoining house where his uncle the rabbi lived—beat its wings upon the roof and crowed repeatedly, angrily. It had obviously grown weary of the night, which had lasted far too long, and was calling the sun to appear at last.

  The young man leaned against the wall and listened. The light struck the houses, doors opened, the streets came to life. Little by little the morning murmur rose from earth and trees, and slid out through the cracks in the houses: Nazareth was awakening. Suddenly there was a deep groan from the adjacent house, followed immediately by the rabbi’s savage yell. He was rousing God, reminding him of the promise he had made to Israel. “God of Israel, God of Israel, how long?” cried the rabbi, and the youth heard his knees strike crisply, hurriedly, against the floor boards.

  He shook his head. “He’s praying,” he murmured; “he’s prostrating himself and calling on God. Now he will bang on the wall for me to start my prostrations.” He frowned angrily. “It’s bad enough I have to deal with God without also having to put up with men!” He knocked hard on the dividing wall with his fist to show the fierce rabbi that he was awake and praying.

  He jumped to his feet. His patched and repatched tunic rolled off his shoulder and revealed his body—thin, sunburned, covered with red and black welts. Ashamed, he hastily gathered up the garment and wrapped it around his naked flesh.

  The pale morning light came through the skylight and fell upon him, softly illuminating his face. All obstinacy, pride and affection ... The fluff about his chin and cheeks had become a curly coal-black beard. His nose was hooked, his lips thick, and since they were slightly parted, his teeth gleamed brilliantly white in the light. It was not a beautiful face, but it had a hidden, disquieting charm. Were his eyelashes to blame? Thick and exceedingly long, they threw a strange blue shadow over the entire face. Or were his eyes responsible? They were large and black, full of light, full of darkness—all intimidation and sweetness. Flickering like those of a snake, they stared at you from between the long lashes, and your head reeled.

  He shook out the shavings which had become tangled in his armpits and beard. His ear had caught the sound of heavy footsteps. They were approaching, and he recognized them. “It’s him; he’s coming again,” he groaned in disgust. “What does he want with me?” He crept toward the door to listen, but suddenly he stopped, terrified. Who had put the workbench behind the door and piled the cross and tools on it? Who? When? The night was full of evil spirits, full of dreams. We sleep, and they find the doors open, pass in and out at will and turn our houses and our brains upside down.

  “Someone came last night in my sleep,” he murmured under his breath, as though he feared the visitor were still there and might overhear him. “Someone came. Surely it was God, God ... or was it the devil? Who can tell them apart? They exchange faces; God sometimes becomes all darkness, the devil all light, and the mind of man is left in a muddle.” He shuddered. There were two paths. Which way should he go, which path should he choose?

  The heavy steps continued to draw nearer. The young man looked around him anxiously. He seemed to be searching for a place to hide, to escape. He feared this man and did not want him to come, for deep within him was an old wound which would not close. Once when they were playing together as children, the other, who was three years older, had thrown him down and thrashed him. He picked himself up and did not speak, but he never went after that to play with the other children. He was ashamed, afraid. Curled up all alone in the yard of his house, he spun in his mind how one day he would wash away his shame, prove he was better than they were, surpass them all. And after so many years, the wound had never closed, had never ceased to run.

  “Is he still pursuing me,” he murmured, “still? What does he want with me? I won’t let him in!”

  A kick jarred the door. The young man darted forward. Summoning up all his strength, he removed the bench and opened the door. Standing on the threshold was a colossus with a curly red beard, open-shirted, barefooted, red-faced, sweating. Chewing an ear of grilled corn which he held in his hand, he swept his glance around the workshop, saw the cross leaning against the wall, and scowled. Then he extended his foot and entered.

  Without saying a word he curled up in a corner, biting fiercely into the corn. The youth, still standing, kept his face averted from the other and looked outside through the open door at the narrow, untimely awakened street. Dust had not yet been stirred; the soil was damp and fragrant. The night dew and the light of the dawn dangled from the leaves of the olive tree opposite: the whole tree laughed. Enraptured, the young man breathed in the morning world.

  But the redbeard turned. “Shut the door,” he growled. “I have something to say to you.”

  The youth quivered when he heard the savage voice. He closed the door, sat down on the edge of the bench, and waited.

  “I’ve come,” said the redbeard. “Everything is ready.”

  He threw away the ear of corn. Raising his hard blue eyes, he pinned them on the youth and stretched forth his fat, much-wrinkled neck: “And what about you—are you ready too?”

  The light had increased. The young man could now see the redbeard’s coarse, unstable face more clearly. It was not one, but two. When one half laughed the other threatened, when one half was in pain the other remained stiff and immobile; and even when both halves became reconciled for an instant, beneath the reconciliation you still felt that God and the devil were wrestling, irreconcilable.

  The young man did not reply. The redbeard glanced at him furiously.

  “Are you ready?” he asked again. He had already begun to get up in order to grab him by the arm and shake him awake so that he would give an answer, but before he could do so a trumpet blared and cavalry rushed into the narrow street, followed by the heavy, rhythmic march of Roman soldiers. The redbeard clenched his fist and raised it toward the ceiling.

  “God of Israel,” he bellowed, “the time has come. Today! Not tomorrow, today!”

  He turned again to the young man.

  “Are you ready?” he asked once more, but then, without waiting for a reply: “No, no, you won’t bring the cross—that’s what I say! The people are assembled. Barabbas has come down from the mountains with his men. We’ll break into the prison
and snatch away the Zealot. Then it will happen—don’t shake your head!—then the miracle will happen. Ask your uncle the rabbi. Yesterday he gathered all of us together in the synagogue—why didn’t your Highness come too? He stood up and spoke to us. ‘The Messiah won’t come,’ he said, ‘as long as we remain standing with crossed hands. God and men must fight together if the Messiah is to come.’ That’s what he told us, for your information. God isn’t enough, man isn’t enough. Both have to fight—together! Do you hear?”

  He grasped the young man by the arm and shook him. “Do you hear? Where is your mind? You should have been there to listen to your uncle—maybe you would have come to your senses, poor devil! He said the Zealot—yes, the very Zealot the Roman infidels are going to crucify today—might be the One we’ve waited for over so many generations. If we leave him unaided, if we fail to rush out and save him, he will die without revealing who he is. But if we run and save him, the miracle will happen. What miracle? He will throw off his rags and the royal crown of David will shine on his head! That’s what he told us, for your information. When we heard him we all shed tears. The old rabbi lifted his hands to heaven and shouted, ‘Lord of Israel, today, not tomorrow, today!’ and we, every one of us, raised our hands, looked up at heaven and yelled, threatened, wept. ‘Today! Not tomorrow, today!’ Do you hear, son of the Carpenter, or am I talking to a blank wall?”