“I say we should return to Galilee,” Peter repeated obstinately.

John grasped the others’ hands and shoulders. “Brothers,” he besought them, “think of the Baptist’s final words. He raised his arms under the executioner’s sword and shouted, ‘Jesus of Nazareth, leave the desert. I am departing. Return to mankind. Come, do not forsake the world!’ Those words have a deep significance, friends. God forgive me if I utter a blasphemy, but…”

His heart stopped. Andrew clasped his hand.

“Speak, John. What terrible presentiment is it that you don’t dare reveal?”

“But if our master is the…” he stammered.

“Is what?”

John’s voice was soft, gasping, full of terror: “… the Messiah!”

They all shook. The Messiah! They had been with him for such a long time, and the idea had never entered their heads! At first they had taken him for a good man, a saint who was bringing love to the world; then for a prophet, not a wild one like the prophets of old, but gay and domesticated. He was lowering the kingdom of heaven to earth: in other words, he was bringing justice and a comfortable, contented way of life. He called the ancestral God of Israel “Father,” and no sooner did he do so than hard-necked, obstinate Jehovah sweetened and everyone became his child… But now, what was this word which had escaped John’s lips-Messiah! In other words: the sword of David, Israel ’s omnipotence, war! And they, the disciples, his first followers: they were great lords, tetrarchs and patriarchs around his throne! As God had angels and archangels surrounding him in heaven, so they, the disciples, were the ethnarchs and patriarchs upon the earth! Their eyes gleamed.

“I take back what I said, lads,” exclaimed Peter, blushing terribly. “I shall never leave him!”

“Nor I!”

“Nor I!”

“Nor I!”

Judas spat angrily and banged his fist on the door. “You damned stalwarts!” he screamed at them. “As long as you believed him sickly and weak, you couldn’t get away fast enough. But now that you smell grandeur: ‘I shall never leave him!’ One day every single one of you will forsake him-mark my words-while I alone shall not betray him. Simon of Cyrene, be my witness!”

The innkeeper had been listening to them and sniggering behind his drooping mustache. He caught Judas’s eye. “Bah, just look at them! And they want to save the world!”

But his nostrils caught a smell from the oven. “The head is burning!” he shouted, and with one bound he was in the yard.

The bewildered companions looked at each other.

“So, that’s why the Baptist froze when he saw him,” said Peter, tapping his forehead.

Once they got started, their minds swelled and swelled.

“And did you all see the dove over his head while he was being baptized?”

“It wasn’t a dove, it was a flash of lightning.”

“No, no-a dove. It was cooing.”

“It wasn’t cooing; it was talking. I heard it with my own ears say: ‘Saint! Saint! Saint!’ ”

“It was the Holy Spirit!” said Peter, his eyes filling with wings of gold. “The Holy Spirit came down from heaven and we all turned to stone, don’t you remember! I wanted to take a stop and go closer, but my foot was numb-how could I move! I wanted to scream, but my lips would not part. The winds stood still; reeds, river, men, birds-every single thing turned to marble from fear. The Baptist’s hand was the only moving thing: slowly, slowly, it baptized.”

“I didn’t see anything and I didn’t hear anything,” said Judas, incensed. “Your eyes and ears were drunk.”

“You didn’t see, redbeard, because you didn’t want to see,” Peter rebuked him.

“And your lordship, straw-beard, saw because you wanted to see. You had an appetite to see the Holy Spirit, so it was the Holy Spirit you saw. And what’s more, now you make these numbskulls see it too. You’ll have to answer for the consequences.”

Jacob, so far, had been chewing his fingernails and listening, without speaking. Now, however, he could contain himself no longer. “Wait a minute, lads,” he said, “don’t explode like gunpowder. Come, let’s discuss this thing sensibly. Do you really think the Baptist said those words before they cut off his head? It seems very unlikely to me. First of all, which one of us was there to hear him? And then there’s this also: even if he said the words to himself, he would never have voiced them-because he’d have known the king would hear about it, would send spies to find out who this man was, this Jesus in the desert, would catch him and cut off his head as well. As my father says, two and two make four. So, let’s not allow our heads to get too swelled.”

But Peter became angry. “Two and two make fourteen, that’s my opinion, and damn it! let logic and our brains say what they will. Give us something to drink, Andrew. We’ll drown our minds in order to clear our sight!”

A tall, ungainly man with shrunken cheeks, barefooted, wearing a white sheet wrapped about him and a string of amulets around his neck, rushed into the tavern and put his palm to his breast in the sign of greeting.

“Farewell, brothers. I’m leaving, going to God. Do you have any commissions to place with me?”

Without waiting for an answer, he departed at a run and entered the next house.

At this moment the innkeeper appeared with the platter, and a delicious aroma invaded the room. His eye fell on the gangling lunatic.

“Have a good trip,” he called to him. “Send our kindest regards!… There’s another one for you!” He laughed. “Bah, it’s true the end of the world has already come: the place is full of maniacs. This one says he saw God two nights ago when he went out to take a piss. From that moment on, how could he deign to live! He even refuses to eat. ‘I’ve been invited to heaven,’ he says. ‘I’ll eat there.’ Well, he’s dressed himself in his shroud and is going a quick round of all the doors. He accepts commissions, says goodbye, and leaves. You see what happens when you get too close to God! Take care, lads-I say it for your own good-don’t go too near him. I worship his grace, but from a distance. Keep clear!”

He placed the platter with the lamb’s head in the middle of the table. His lips, eyes and ears were laughing.

“Fresh head!” he called. “John the Baptist! Eat hearty!”

John felt nauseous and drew back. Andrew, who had put out his hand, held it in the air. The head, posed on the tray, looked at them one by one, dimly, with its wide-open motionless eyes.

“Simon, you scoundrel,” exclaimed Peter, “you’ll disgust us and we won’t be able to touch it! How can I pick out the eyes now? I’d love them as an appetizer, but it’ll be just like eating the eyes of the Baptist.”

The innkeeper burst into laughter. “Don’t worry, dear Peter,” he said, “I’ll eat them myself-but not before the dainty tongue, bless it! which shouted: ‘Repent! Repent! The end of the world has come!’ Unfortunately, his own end came first, poor thing.”

He took out a knife, sliced away the tongue and downed it in one gulp. Then he bolted a full glass of wine, and sat admiring his two barrels.

“All right, forget it, lads. I feel sorry for you. I’ll change the subject so that the Baptist’s head will go out of your minds and you’ll be able to eat the lamb’s… Well, then, can you imagine who painted that gem of a cock and a pig that you admire there on the barrels? Your gracious host, with his own hands, if you please. And can you guess why a cock and a pig? How could you, you idiotic Galileans! I must therefore disentangle the mystery for you and enlighten your infinitesimal brains!”

Peter looked at the head and licked his chops, but still did not dare put out his hand to remove the eyes and eat them. The Baptist was continually in his mind. The prophet’s eyes had gaped in the same way when they regarded mankind.

“So, listen,” continued the innkeeper, “and enlighten, as I say, your infinitesimal brains… When God finished the world (why did the blessed fellow go to all that trouble anyway?) and washed the mud off his hands, he called all the newborn creatures and proudly asked them, ‘Say, birds and beasts, how do you like the world I built? Do you find anything wrong with it?’ They all straightway began to bleat, bray, moo, meow, and twitter: ‘Nothing! Nothing! Nothing!’