The women, meanwhile, pulled at their husbands, trying to get them to depart. They understood everything. This foreigner, they told themselves, has the viper’s eye. He looks at you and you go out of your mind. He speaks and the world comes tumbling down. Let’s get away!

The blind elder took pity on them. “Courage, my children,” he cried. “I hear monstrous things, but don’t be afraid. Everything will fall peacefully in place once more-you shall see. The world is steady; it has a good foundation and will stand as long as God stands. Don’t listen to those who can see; listen to me, a blind man, who therefore can see better than all of you. The race of Israel is immortal. It signed an agreement with God: God affixed his seal and presented us with the entire earth. So, don’t be afraid. It’s almost midnight-let’s go to bed!” He put forth his staff and made a line for the door.

The three elders left first. Next went the rest of the men; lastly, the women-emptying the house.

The two sisters laid the visitor’s bedding on the wooden platform. Mary went to her trunk and took out the silk and linen sheets meant for her wedding night. Martha brought the satin feather quilt which she had kept untouched so many years, awaiting the long-desired night when it would cover both her and her husband. She also brought fragrant herbs-basil and mint-and filled his pillow to overflowing.

“He’ll sleep tonight like a bridegroom,” said Martha with a sigh. Mary sighed also, but did not speak. Close your ears, God, she murmured to herself. The world is good despite my sighs. Yes, good; but I’m so afraid of loneliness, and I like this visitor so very much…

The sisters went into the small inner room and lay down on their hard mats. The two men were on the wooden platform, one at each end, their feet touching. Lazarus was happy. What an air of sanctity and beatitude hung over the entire house! He breathed tranquilly, deeply, pushed the soles of his feet lightly against the holy soles and felt a mysterious force, a divine certitude, rising and branching out through his whole body. His kidneys no longer pained him, his heart stopped palpitating; his blood flowed peacefully, contentedly from head to toe and irrigated the afflicted, jaundiced body.

This is the real baptism, he was thinking. This night I, the house, my sisters-all were baptized. The river Jordan came to our house.

But how could the two sisters close their eyes! It had been years since a strange man slept in their house. Visitors always lodged with one of the village notables, never descended to their humble, out-of-the-way cottage; and besides, their queer, sickly brother did not like company. But tonight, what an unexpected joy! With quivering nostrils they smelled the air. How it had changed; how perfumed it was-not with basil and mint but with the odor of a man!

“He says God sent him to build the ark, and he’s promised to put us in. Do you hear me, Mary, or are you asleep?”

“I’m not asleep,” Mary replied. She was holding her breasts in her palms, for they pained her.

“Dear God,” Martha continued, “let the end of the world come soon, so that we can enter the ark with him. I’ll serve him, that won’t bother me; and you, Mary, will be his companion. The ark will sail on and on forever, and I shall serve him perpetually, and you will sit perpetually at his feet and be his companion. That is how I imagine Paradise to be. You too, Mary?”

“Yes,” Mary replied, closing her eyes.

They talked and sighed. Jesus, meanwhile, was sitting up, though still in a deep sleep. He felt that he was not asleep at all but, rather, standing body and soul in the Jordan, refreshed. The desert sand was being removed from his body and the virtues and vices of mankind from his soul-leaving it again virgin. Suddenly it seemed to him in his sleep that he had come out of the Jordan, taken a green, untrodden path and entered a dense orchard full of blossoms and fruit. And it seemed he was no longer himself, Jesus the son of Mary of Nazareth, but rather Adam, the first man to be created. He had issued from God’s hands at precisely that moment-his flesh was still fresh clay-and had lain down on the flowering grass to dry off in the sun so that his bones might congeal, color come to his face, and the seventy-two joints of his body tighten and enable him to stand up and walk. While he lay and ripened under the sun, birds fluttered over his head, flew from tree to tree, promenaded on the springtime grass. They conversed among themselves, twittered, looked at this new creature who lay on the grass, examined him with curiosity. Each had his say and then continued on; and he, versed in their language, rejoiced to hear them.

The peacock, proudly fanning out its feathers, strolled up and down, threw oblique, seductive glances at this Adam stretched on the ground, and explained to him: “I used to be a hen, but I loved an angel and became a peacock. Is there any bird more beautiful than I am? None!” The turtledove flew from tree to tree, lifted its throat to heaven and cried, “Love! Love! Love!” And the thrush: “Among all the birds, only I sing and keep warm in the thickest of frosts.” The swallow: “If not for me, the trees would never blossom.” The cock: “If not for me, morning would never come.” The lark: “At dawn when I fly up into the sky to sing, I say goodbye to my children because I never know if I shall return from my song still alive.” The nightingale: “Don’t look at me as I am now, in my poor clothes. I too had large gleaming wings, but I turned them into song.” And a long-nosed blackbird came and clung to the shoulder of the first-created man, bent over to his ear and spoke to him softly, as though entrusting a great secret to him: “The doors of heaven and hell are adjacent, and identical: both green, both beautiful. Take care, Adam! Take care! Take care!”

Exactly then, at dawn, with the blackbird’s song in his mind, Jesus awoke.

Chapter Nineteen

GREAT THINGS happen when God mixes with man. Without man, God would have no mind on this Earth to reflect upon his creatures intelligibly and to examine, fearfully yet impudently, his wise omnipotence. He would have on this Earth no heart to pity the concerns of others and to struggle to beget virtues and cares which God either did not want, or forgot, or was afraid to fashion. He breathed upon man, however, giving him the power and audacity to continue creation.

But man, without God, born as he is unarmed, would have been obliterated by hunger, fear and cold; and if he survived these, he would have crawled like a slug midway between the lions and lice; and if with incessant struggle he managed to stand on his hind legs, he would never have been able to escape the tight, warm, tender embrace of his mother the monkey… Reflecting on this, Jesus felt more deeply than he had ever felt before that God and man could become one.

He had set out in the early morning along the road to Jerusalem. God was to his left and to his right. He could touch him with his elbows. They were traveling together, both with the identical concern. The world had gone astray. Instead of ascending to heaven it was descending to hell. The two of them together, God and the Son of God, would have to toil to bring it once more onto the correct road. That was why Jesus hurried so. He ate up the road with long strides, anxious to meet his companions so that the struggle could begin. The sun, rising from the Dead Sea, the birds struck by the new light and singing, the trembling leaves of the trees, the white road which rolled to the walls of Jerusalem and drew him with it-all were shouting at him, “Hurry! Hurry! We are perishing!”

“I know, I know,” Jesus answered. “I know, and I am coming!”

The same morning, just after dawn, the companions were sliding along, next to the walls of Jerusalem’s still-deserted lanes; not all together, but scattered in twos-Peter with Andrew, Jacob with John, and Judas by himself in the lead. Afraid, they ran, glancing out of the corners of their eyes in every direction to see if they were being followed. The fortress gate of David rose up before them. They took the first alley on the left and stole into the tavern of Simon the Cyrenian.