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Now night will come, the son of Mary reflected; now God’s black daughter will arrive with her caravan of stars; and before the stars had a chance to come out and fill the sky, they filled his mind.
He had already begun to get ready to rise and resume his journey when he heard a horn behind him. A passer-by was calling him by name. He turned and in the thin light of the evening discerned someone signaling to him and mounting the slope, loaded down with an immense bundle. Who can it be? he asked himself, struggling to make out the wayfarer’s features beneath the bundle. Somewhere he had seen that pale face and short, scanty beard and those thin, crooked shanks before. Suddenly he cried out, “Is that you, Thomas? Have you started your circuit of the villages again?”
The wily, cross-eyed peddler stood in front of him now, panting. He placed his bundle on the ground and sponged the sweat from his pointed forehead and the tiny wry eyes whose ambivalent dance left you unable to tell whether they were rejoicing or scoffing.
The son of Mary liked him very much. He often saw him pass by his workshop on his way back from his rounds, the horn thrust under his belt. He would throw his bundle down on a bench and begin to talk about everything he had seen. He sneered, he laughed, he teased; he had faith neither in the God of Israel nor in any other god. They all jeer at us, he would say; they all jeer at us to make us slaughter kids for them, burn them sweet incense and shout ourselves hoarse hymning their beauty… The son of Mary listened to him, and his constricted heart relaxed a little: he admired this roguish mind which, despite all its poverty and all the slavery and misery of its race, found strength to conquer the slavery and the poverty by means of laughter and mockery.
And Thomas the peddler liked the son of Mary. He looked upon him as a naïve sheep, sickly and bleating, seeking God in order to hide behind his shadow.
“You’re a sheep, son of Mary,” he said to him regularly, splitting with laughter, “but you’ve got a wolf inside you, and this wolf is going to eat you up!” Then from under his shirt he would take a handful of dates or a pomegranate or an apple he had stolen from the orchard, and treat him.
“It’s good to see you,” he said now, as soon as he had caught his breath. “God loves you. Where are you going?”
“To the monastery,” Jesus replied, pointing toward the lake.
“Well, then, it’s doubly good to see you. Turn back!”
“Why? God-”
But Thomas exploded. “Do me a favor and don’t start up again about God. Where he’s concerned there are no boundaries. You walk all your life, this one and the next, trying to reach him, but the blessed fellow has no end. So forget about him and don’t mix him up in our affairs. Listen to me: here we’ve got to deal with man-with dishonest, seven-times-shrewd man. To begin with, watch out for Judas the redbeard. Before I left Nazareth I saw him whispering with the mother of the crucified Zealot, then with Barabbas and two or three other knife-wielding cronies of his from the brotherhood. I heard them mention your name, so watch out, son of Mary: don’t go to the monastery.”
But Jesus bowed his head. “Every living thing is in God’s hands. He decides whom he wants to save, whom he wants to slay. What resistance can we offer? I shall go, and may God help me!”
“You’ll go?” shouted Thomas in a rage. “But right now, right now as we talk, Judas is at the monastery with his knife hidden under his shirt. Do you carry a knife?”
The son of Mary shuddered. “No,” he said. “What use should I have for one?”
Thomas laughed. “Sheep… sheep… sheep…” he murmured. He picked up his bundle. “Farewell. Do what you like. I tell you to turn back, and you say, ‘I shall go!’ All right, go-and kick yourself afterward when it’s too late!”
With a twinkle in his tiny wry eyes he started back down the slope, whistling.
The night now fell in earnest. The ground darkened, the lake sank away; in Capernaum the first lamps were lighted. The birds of the day had already buried their heads in their wings and gone to sleep; the night birds, awakening, began to go out on the hunt.
This is a holy hour, a good time to leave, thought the son of Mary. No one will see me-so let’s be off!
He recalled Thomas’s words.
“Whatever God wills, that is what will happen,” he murmured. “If God is the one who’s pushing me to go find my murderer, then let me go quickly and be killed. That, at least, I am able to do, and I’m doing it.” He turned and looked behind him.
“Let’s go,” he said to his invisible companion, and he set out toward the lake.
The night was sweet, warm, damp; a gentle wind blew from the south. Capernaum smelled of fish and jasmine. Old Zebedee sat in the courtyard of his house with his wife Salome, under the large almond tree. They had finished their meal and were chatting. Inside, their son Jacob twisted and turned on his mattress. Tangled up in his mind and infuriating his heart were the crucified Zealot, the new injustice God had done the people in taking their wheat, and the son of Mary, who had sold himself as a spy. These thoughts did not let him sleep; and his father’s chattering outside infuriated him that much more. Boiling over with rage, he jumped to his feet, went out into the yard and strode across the threshold.
“Where are you going?” his mother called to him anxiously.
“To the lake to catch a breath of fresh air,” he growled, and he vanished into the darkness.
Old Zebedee shook his head and sighed.
“The world isn’t what it used to be, wife,” he said. “Today the young folk are too big for their skins. They’re neither birds nor fish; they’re flying fish. The sea is too small for them, so they fly into the air. But they can’t last long there, so they plunge back down into the sea and then start all over again from the begi
Old Salome played deaf. Her old husband had drunk quite enough already. She tried to change the subject. “They’re young,” she said. “Don’t let it worry you; it will blow over.”
“By gad, wife, you’re right! You’ve a fertile head on your shoulders. Why do I sit here getting a headache? That’s it: they’re young, it will blow over. Youth is a sickness; it passes. When I was young there were times when I too got all heated up and twisted and turned on my bed. I thought I was looking for God, but I was really looking for a wife-for you, Salome! I got married and calmed down. Our sons will do the same, so don’t give it another thought! I’m content now… Wife, bring me a snack and some octopus; and bring me a bit of wine, dear Salome-I want to drink to your health!”
In the adjoining neighborhood, a little farther on, old Jonah sat all alone in his cottage and mended his nets by the light of the lamp. He mended and mended, but his mind and thoughts were not on his dear departed wife, who had died at this time a year before, nor on his halfwit of a son Andrew, nor on that prize cow-brained nitwit, his other son Peter, who still went the rounds of the taverns of Nazareth, having left his father high and dry, old man that he was, to wrestle all alone with the fish. No, he was thinking of Zebedee’s words and laboring under a great inquietude. Perhaps he really was the prophet Jonah. He looked at his hands, feet, thighs: all scales. Even his breath and sweat smelled of fish, and now he remembered that the other day when he wept on account of his wife, his tears had smelled of fish too. And sly old Zebedee was right about the crabs: once in a while he found some in his beard… Perhaps he was the prophet Jonah after all. Ah! that explained why he was never in the mood to talk, why the words had to be dragged out of him with a grapnel, why he always stumbled and tripped when he walked on dry land. But when he plunged into the lake: what a relief that was, what joy! The water lifted him up in its bosom, caressed him, licked him, purred in his ear and spoke to him; and he, like the fish, answered it without words, and bubbles came out of his mouth!