The Autobiography of Jesus Christ

Foreword

This book was written 2000 years ago by a man named Jesus of Nazareth. One fine day a red cardboard folder landed on our editorial desk containing a manuscript written in Greek, with a word here and there in Latin, Hebrew and Aramaic. The whole thing consisted of well-preserved papyrus sheets. Accompanying the ancient life story in the folder were low-level documents from a citizen of the Russian Federation (including a certificate accompanying the medal "for the liberation of Palmyra," newspaper clippings, two photographs and a death certificate issued by the population register of the Kuzhminki district of the city of Moscow. Judging from these documents, the finder of the manuscript had served in the Russian army, had been in Syria during the recent military campaign, and had discovered a copper case containing papyrus somewhere in Damascus, in a house wall torn by a grenade explosion. After his return, the man had worked for the Moscow rescue services and perished putting out a fire, a fact confirmed by an obituary clipped from the newspaper The Savior. We express our gratitude to the staff of the institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences who translated the text into Russian. The manuscript has been given special preservation. Laboratory research has shown that the time of its creation coincides with the date indicated by the author.

Chapter 1 - The temple

I was born in a cemetery just outside Bethlehem. My father and mother came from Nazareth to participate in the census taken by Quirinius, who ruled Syria. They could not find a place in the recess, and I came into the world in a cave next to the tomb of Rachel, the youngest wife of the patriarch Jacob. My mother was a strong, healthy woman and the very next day she was able to leave the cave to go to Bethlehem, where at the town hall we were added to the list of inhabitants of the Roman province and my name was inscribed on the white Nile papyrus - Jesus, son of Joseph.

It is said that in those days, between the planets Shabtai and Maadim in the constellation serpent-bearer, a new wandering star appeared of an unusual fierceness that faded as I sucked in the breast milk more and more voraciously.

It was in the 42nd year of the August government.

My parents returned to Nazareth and for 13 years nothing special happened to me. I helped herd goats and learned reading, writing and philosophy from the old Helleen Nikandros.

I first saw Jerusalem on the Feast of Passover. I was with my parents then. My father Joseph was already very old, even though he was still working as a carpenter. My mother and I went on foot, while he sat on a young donkey that often stopped to beam, with its head in the air, as if to tell the world of something important. Father would then get angry and kick him in his flanks with his heels, while the pilgrims walked around us on either side. Joseph had the land: the night before he had returned from Sepphoris, where he had made crosses with other craftsmen for the death sentence of rioters, and the Centurion in charge of the work had paid him less than promised.

I have little memory of Jerusalem, but I was struck by the temple. From afar it is like a snow mountain with a peak of gold, because it is built of white stone, while the roof is covered with pure gold leaf. Pilgrims stop their horses on the hill, their donkey or their camel,

their wagon or cart, and the slaves with their palanquin around it. Against the naked mountain peaks in the distance, its immense size and at the same time weightlessness makes it seem like it is floating above the city.

In the temple grounds, work goes on uninterrupted, year after year: servants carry firewood to the furnaces, other servants carry dishes with oil, which other servants fry with gritter goods and aromatic spice mixtures. On a huge brass altar, meat roasts, incense wafts, blue fumes hang. Seated under the marble pillars of the gallery, scribes and Pharisees argue with Sadducees to master the most precise interpretation of the law. A number of pilgrims sit on a straw mat in a quiet corner behind, some of them carrying a slaughtered bull, while Levites converse in hushed tones with high-minded people and each other to make important decisions and perhaps decide the fate of the Kingdom of Israel. An eternal flame crackles in the wood fire on the altar, the chanting of prayers mingles with the shouts of merchants, with trumpets blaring and the roar of animals being slaughtered. If that sanctified work suddenly ceases, what will happen to our people? What will become of me when the temple is no longer there? Will I die then?

So I thought, as I studied the mosaics on the walls in the narthex. The holy of holies was hidden behind curtains of cherubs and flowers, and it was as if behind them was the center of the firmament, that all that was as inexplicable, hidden, hungered as it was mighty and beautiful was concentrated there. This was emphasized by the precious gems on the robes of the clergy, the golden censers and cups, the silver vessels as much as seven cubits high, so smoothly polished that the day's fires of the menorah were reflected in them, whose oil lamps were filled with olive oil from the holy court.

Father and mother brought their offerings and rested with an acquaintance named Theodosius, a dealer in tableware and dyes for fabrics. They allowed me to stay in the temple until evening, but after that I had to come to Theodosius' house. The plan was to spend the night with him and return to Nazareth the next day with a large group of fellow townspeople.

I sat among other children in one of the rooms of the temple and waited for a clergyman, a law scholar, to come and talk to us. While waiting for him, we were treated to a pitcher of grape juice and a basket of figs.

I knew the sacred lore even then, thanks to my good memory, which enabled me to remember something I had once read or heard once and for all.

That day, for the first time in my life, I experienced intense anger. Like everyone else, my parents also had to pay sacred taxes in silver Tyrian staters, because, in the opinion of the treasurers of the temple, these coins were not unclean because they did not have an image of pagan Gods or the heads of Roman emperors on them.

In niches stood tall jugs into which pilgrims threw coins under the watchful eye of levites. When those jugs were full, a guard carried them to the underground room under the temple. In the square in front of the entrance, in addition to the traders of sacrificial animals, there were men who exchanged unclean coins from the pilgrims for staters, keeping a small percentage for themselves. And the exchanger had cheated us, giving us back a dinar less than he should have done for our three-drachmest pieces. I figured it out immediately, because in my mind I had added everything up, but mother refused to demand back what she was short from the exchanger. Her eyes twinkled at me, and she said that such was little godliness, since, after all, today was a big holiday.... As always, Father did not dare to contradict her, but I boiled internally and wanted to overturn the table of that damned changeling and demand justice....

Too bad, not everyone understands that it is not God who needs our piety, but that it is men who teach us to hate the emperor, and his head on the coins.

That year I became, son of chastisement,

and by now understood that a law, even the most righteous, cannot accomplish itself by itself, because, after all, God is helpless without the people who are his instruments.

But whose son was I really, I wanted to know. Shortly before we had left for Jerusalem, a neighbor had told me that Joseph was not my father.

At first I didn't believe it.

It was painful to think that my mother had obtained me criminally. I didn't dare talk to her about it to find out the truth. Hot-tempered and bossy as she was, she considered me a misfit anyway, on whom there was a stitch loose, and constantly suspected me of things. She had grown up under the smoke of the temple and was naturally proud of that. One time she said I was too savvy to love me. An intelligent person sees the shortcomings of those around him, even those closest to him.

I wanted to talk to the cleric about that. Surely a clergyman should be wise enough to instill a quiet confidence... But of what? What can we be sure of at all?

Soon the clergyman showed up. We sat on the floor, on pieces of felt, and he stood before us. We asked questions, he answered. He repeated the commandments that I knew just as well. Cited this or that place from the Torah. And I asked him what God had to do with such a large temple; after all, his love for us could not depend on the width and height of a structure, could it? The spiritual answers that people from all ends of the earth flocked to the temple to appear as one generation before God, and therefore the temple was a large, spacious house for a great and wealthy generation. His answers disappointed me because it followed that the temple was built by and for people. So what was God doing here?

Then the spiritual began about the messiah. About the last prophet who would come to deliver Israel forever. I burst out laughing, and the other children stared at me in amazement. "Then where did he come from? I asked. 'From the box of law scrolls?'

'To argue about that, you must first study the Holy Scriptures properly,' the cleric replied.

'And why has the messiah still not come? What is he waiting for? I asked without understanding.

'Boy, we are not yet worthy to experience Him, because our faith is still very weak.'

'So it's not about holy scripture, it's about faith?' I continued curiously. 'So what matters is faith, so all the rest is just words?'

'The prophet Moses received from the Lord God the Tablets of the Law,' the clergyman patiently explained, but I noticed he was getting cranky. 'Also the prophet Isaiah was animated by the Lord God Himself. Is it no wonder then that we can read what he told us? The Messiah is coming and all nations will turn their swords into plowshares! Wars will end, peace and prosperity will break forth.... The wisdom of all the prophets is collected in the Scriptures. They are not just scrolls of text, they are a gift whose rejection is foolish and shameless. Do you understand, boy?

Then I asked another question, to which you could only give a direct answer, without being able to hide behind the prophets: 'There is a room near the temple for the lepers. Has anyone ever been healed there?'

The cleric pretended not to have heard the question, but over his face slipped an untruthful smile, as if for a moment he fit the mask behind which the monstrous truth was hidden, and he began to recount how the angel of death had gone by the houses in Egypt to kill the firstborn, because Pharaoh did not want to release the Jews from slavery.

That evening, when the interview was over and the children had gone their separate ways, I joked to the clergyman that I had no parents and had nowhere to go. He consulted some people and I was given permission to stay in Temple Square as long as the holiday continued.

I knew I had to learn all the time, and I decided that in the Temple I had the opportunity to do that, there you could talk to a lot of educated people and learn a lot of new things.

I was given flat, unleavened bread and goat's milk and led after a small shelter next to the oil storage room, which resembled a horse stable. There was clean straw. I lay down on it. Beyond the edge of the thatched roof was the starry sky. I remembered that you had people who believed in celestial bodies, and that some worshiped black stones and worshipped those that had fallen from the sky.... That told me about the Hellenist Nikandros, who had taught me a lot about Nazareth with his scrolls. And I decided then that a doctor who healed a leper deserved more love than stones or than the clergy of the temple, all of whom could not yet answer one question clearly.

I was terrified because, looking up at the heavens above the temple, I remembered the words of Isaiah: "And all the host of the heavens shall fester, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a book, and all their host shall fall off, as a leaf falls from the vine, and as a fig falls from a fig tree.

I felt restlessness and bitterness. I understood that I did not want to return to Nazareth with my parents. But why not? How was I to go on living? Why hadn't the clergyman said anything substantial? I looked for answers... I understood that my father was old and would die soon. And was he really my father? Probably not. Who was he to me? A strange mortal... I began to cry. Mother was cold and dreaming of a new husband. She was weighed down by old Joseph. I loved him, but I understood that returning home would not make me stronger.... I had to go to life, away, away from my mortal parents.

In Nazareth lived the girl Rebecca I liked: a little pouty plum mouth and eyes filled with dark fire. She was as enchanting as she was stubborn, but what a special sweetness there was in that stubbornness of hers, you wanted to break it as secretly as stubbornly. Within her, within her slender tawny body lay the hot, brittle breath of life itself. She looked like a tulip from the mountains. Or an anemone. As life rotted away in my father ... and I wanted nothing to do with my mother.

But Rebecca wasn't worth lingering in the past either. I didn't want to go back home.

Maybe I should go to Athens, to live on? Thought I. Nikandros by now had taught me everything he himself had knowledge of, including the Hellenic language and Latin, the first principles of rhetoric and philosophy, and beyond that, the art of determining one's path in life and making small predictions based on the stars. I had even read the Roman poets with him, spelling out every line: Virgil, Catullus, and they pleased me better than the book of wisdom of Ben-Sirach or the dreary exploits of Judith, the bloodthirsty virgin who had cut off the gullible Holofernes' head. I remember well how excited I was when reading the first lines of Empedocles of Akragas read, "Be glad, God is among you! From mortals I have become immortal'.

I held the scroll in my hand and it was as if God was behind my back, having been summoned from the abyss by this verse.

Born in a graveyard I lay in a horse stable and thought: who am I? Was I created just to replace a sleeping horse in this wonderful world? My eyelids stuck together. I rolled up on the straw, like a wild animal. The nights at the end of the month of nisan are still chilly ... my parents say we are of royal blood, I considered, but of what should I be king?

The sounds of Jerusalem did not sound through there, because of the high walls, but the roar of sacrificial animals in the corral could be heard on the temple grounds. They felt that the end was near.

I was fed, did little chores. Sometimes I wanted to talk to one of the clergy, but they knocked me off like a horsefly. It was hurtful. Were they perhaps afraid to tell the truth, and was this unwillingness to tell me the truth an act of mercy toward me?

Three days later, my parents found me.

Since I would have come from the temple to the house of Theodosius, they concluded that I must have gotten lost somewhere in Jerusalem, and in search of a son, they had dusted off narrow streets and squares, inquired of people, taken a look in dark cellars, in courtyards and in merchants' stores, until they were savvy enough to return to the temple grounds. There, too, they had not immediately found me among the thousands of pilgrims.

Mother was furious and sailed against me. When she was like this, the milk next to her turned sour and the horses stumbled. Her big fish eyes had an expression of stubborn incomprehension mixed with the bitterest gloom with her fate. She thanked one of the levites for the shelter they had given me. She had to give him three drachmas, which she recalled several times, because we were not very well off.

Then we walked into town, and at the level of the market square she began to shriek in everyone's presence that I was disgracing the whole sex. A rich city woman came by, followed by a slave with two baskets. The slave looked at me and chuckled. Joseph was silent absently, leaning on his cane. I thought it hurt that even a cheap slave was worth thousands of dinars, when mother had just left me three coins.

At the North Gate, she had calmed down a bit, though she continued to wail, "What are you doing to us? We searched all of Jerusalem for you. We thought you had been kidnapped... Taken somewhere under false pretenses... Do you think you are more savvy than us? Why don't you help your father and spend so much time with that cursed Nikandros? It's all his fault! That he may stick the murder under all those scrolls of his! Why do you listen to him more than your parents? While you're no smarter than a lizard sleeping under the wheel of a farmer's cart!

I couldn't make sense of it: mother attributed so much significance to the fact that she herself had been raised in the temple for a few years, and I had only been there for three days, and now she was so displeased with that. Yes, she wanted me to take over father's business and one day become a reputable man, as she liked to express it. A reputable craftsman who could eat from his own hands, as the Law of Moses prescribed... 'if you don't give your son a profession,' she used to repeat, 'it is the same as renouncing him.' What was I to do then? Steal turn spades, axes and rakes, assemble tables, benches and crosses for bandits? No, no, if you didn't want to make a fool of yourself, you had to say: the most vulnerable people ate other people's work. Not for nothing that by the age of four I could read and knew by heart all the names of all our patriarchs.

For two days we waited on the outskirts of the city for a group of pilgrims to go with us to Nazareth; only in this way, as a crowd, could you defend yourself against robbers, and the roads were teeming with them: fugitive slaves, seasoned murderers, bloodthirsty legionnaires without superiors, people who pretended to be envoys of God, but who in the process burned with desire to steal your knapsack and your moneybag at any cost.

We were joined by a gladiator who had ransomed himself into abandoning his handiwork when he had earned a large reward from a duel fight. Neither before nor since have I met a former gladiator, all ending their lives in the sunny circus arena or in a drunken man's fight somewhere on the street as they drank their earned money through it. According to his account, he went to Cana via Nazareth to marry the sister of the gladiator he had killed in the two-fight. I did not believe in such love. After he had ransomed himself, he had become a little tickled with joy, and lying went worse for him than twisting away the net of the retiarius and striking at the throat of a floored opponent with a sword.

By the way, everyone was happy with him, where highwaymen are also with a large group, a gladiator is a useful man in the crowd of pilgrims.

When the Jerusalem was out and walking up the hill, I turned and looked at the temple. Its roof shone in the sun, like the shield of a great warrior in battle with the sky.

During a rest we read excerpts from the sacred history of our people and sang in chorus psalms, the words of which were beautiful, like the patterns on an expensive jewel case, but I tasted aridity and idleness in them. I was not fond of those stories turned into songs.... Nor was I proud of our people, because it is foolish to be proud of your people, of your clothes or your family tree. To be proud is stupid at all. And then mother was also angry, because she noticed it in me, my cool relationship to sacred lore did not escape her. She told me to love our people and hate the Romans. But they had done nothing wrong to me. And Emperor Octavian Augustus was surely a sensible man and certainly an entertaining conversationalist. But it was impossible to argue with Mother; she inflamed like dry brushwood and kept harping on the same thing. And she also said that I was a "triple-crossed dunce" and a "damned liar.

Even as a child, I had noticed that I could turn a lie into truth. It was just a matter of when exactly to lie. You had to sense the moment when one word could take the place of another. There was the case where one morning, out of the blue, I had suddenly told everyone that the ox of Savvaty, our neighbor in Nazareth, would die before the sun rose. I was sweating, but at the same time I was filled with the conviction and delight of being able to see into the future, even if it was not so far away, and the ox did indeed die, which surprised myself most of all, while Savvaty concluded that I had either poisoned the ox or had observed signs of illness in him.

Along the way I thought about the Messiah, whom the cleric in the temple had told. About how it was honorable to be a true prophet. A prophet, and not one of those talentless soothsayers who wandered everywhere, looking for people willing to believe in anything, if only to forget for a moment the reality around them.

It was as interesting as it was easy, being a prophet. Even if it was only for a few people. You did not have to do heavy labor, not with stone, not with wood... And I decided that one day I would be filled with conviction and delight and everyone would say that I was that Messiah. All you had to do was talk to people and give them hope. But I do understand that you need a lot of knowledge and a long time to learn for that. By the way ... Didn't some people get that knowledge at birth?

But Nazareth was such a negory that no one there had the slightest interest in prophets. Everyone was busy with their own little tasks that always had something to do with agriculture. Spiritual apathy, numbness. No one gave a flat loaf of bread to a beggar, and they wouldn't pay any attention to that Messiah even if he came down from a cloud. Not for nothing did you have the saying, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Almost all of my life's wisdom I had gained in Nazareth, nestled among the green hills. With its narrow streets, where a nomad from outside at night could easily plant a knife in the back of a late passer-by to take away his money. And the entire Roman garrison, which was in a neighboring district, would not stand in his way. No one would hear anything, and if he heard anything at all, he would pretend his nose was bleeding. And then the remains ended up in the well. Yes, once they had dredged up a dead person from the well near our house and the water had been spoiled for a long time.

I went there to look with Rebecca. She looked at the corpse in dismay, while I gazed stealthily at her tawny slender neck with the little curly hair. Our God knew what he was doing when he had sculpted Rebecca out of his miracle clay. I believe it was just then that I felt like a man for the first time.

Dead people in Nazareth were often just left lying in the street, and no one cared, especially if they had not been Jews in life. No calamity could compare with the shame of dying and rotting under a fence. For that matter, wild animals could save you from that, jackals, for example, who came upon the smell of decomposition and saved you from that. Yes, jackals were best for this job, as ferrymen from our unsteady realm of death to the world in which no death existed.

Chapter 2 - John

An Egyptian doctor told me the best way to subjugate someone was to create his doppelganger who is completely under your control. 'Do whatever you want with that double,' the Egyptian explained, 'that irrevocably radiates to the real man.' I was thirty, bright, healthy, and I knew what I was doing, and God decided to put me to the test: a man appeared who wanted to become me, to take my place, and the rumor about it spread far beyond the borders of the Jordan Valley. He spoke of eternal joy, freedom of choice, of the bright and righteous kingdom of the future... But unlike many other chattering messiahs in the skin of the Messiah, he indeed possessed great strength of mind.

According to the rumors, even our mothers were of the same age. But he had thought of something new, he allowed anyone who wanted to enter eternal life, using water. His name was John.

That was wise, because for many farmers on the edge of the desert, water equals life. And the people believed John.

At that time, I was long gone from my parents and from Nazareth. I traveled through the Jewish lands from Caesarea of Philippus to the cities of Edom, seeking the knowledge and refined mastery of the prophet. I also visited neighboring empires, Egypt and Libya. I was in Arabia, sailed on a Roman ship to Kirinea, and came as far as Galatia on the shores of the North Sea. I did not get to Hellas, but I dreamed of visiting Athens and its academy at the first opportunity, and also Cissia, where the famous mage community of Evlai resided, and where there was a well containing a mixture of water, oil and resin, and when you poured out the scooped up grub from it, the liquids formed separate streams, and at that time, by looking at it, you could predict the whole future. I had learned languages and morals, and read a lot. What a treat it was to be allowed to stay in the library of Alexandria! Or to bribe the attendant and gain access to the scrolls in the book depository of the Temple of Jerusalem! For weeks I sat there among the cagey old men who, for a few copper coins, could find any information or trace your family tree back to Saul, if necessary, to the eunuch Abagde. I had even managed to get as far as the personal library of the prefect of

Judea, in which these had gathered quite a few texts from Roman poets and Greek scholarship.

In order to do a lot of reading, I worked for a while in the library of Alexandria, for a small salary. At the time, Dionysos of Kilika was his patron. When he had checked my knowledge, he had me correct the Greek translation of the Torah that Jewish clerics had hastily cobbled together at the request of Demetrius of Phalerum. They had spent a few months on the island of Pharos, feasting at the expense of King Ptolomaeus, whom they could enchant with their sweet words, and working between libations, but nonetheless their translation had turned out grubby. Moreover, it was missing some fragments: powerful curses, erotic details and descriptions of some refined corporal punishments. Of course, I was not in a position to fix all that, and sitting in the cool silence of the library rooms, among the stone chests of scrolls, I introduced into the translation only a little of the poetry that my ancestors would have known what to do with. With special care I corrected the psalms of David.

Back from Egypt, it was drudgery, with casual earnings, I often had to borrow money, without the ability to return it, and lived wherever it was convenient. I ate too little. Sometimes a handful of dried figs or a hard and old flatbread I had received as a gift was all I had in my knapsack.

I worked as a house teacher in families of rich people, teaching their children to read and write, and sometimes the house father himself. One person paid me handsomely, because I taught his favorite concubine to read and write. I had to confess that I didn't just do grammar with her.

For a time I did not know how to address a crowd very well, and this caused me much mischief. It did happen that with a fiery speech I had gathered people around me, somewhere in Gilead or in a poor spot on the shore of Lake Hesbon, promised to restore their eyesight, and then suddenly in the middle of a sentence I shut my mouth in a kind of despair, as if blinded by the suspicion: everything is useless. Then I'd be laughed at, beaten up. Often I went into battle myself, to defy fate and test the hardness of my hand. Then I was put in jail, but not for long. They tried to convict me for petty theft and the seduction of other people's wives, but I always managed to turn myself out miraculously, to find incredible evidence for my rightness and get away from such a city.

Women were always attracted to me, and I thank fate that I have known the best of him, the shrewd and sensitive, without whose care I would long since have perished of hunger, succumbed to too hard work in the fields, or joined the ranks of the vagabonds whose white bones lay along the roads in the desert.

One day I walked to Jericho and stopped at the top of a hill, a few stadia from this ancient city. I was alone, a stone path led down into a green valley, in which stretched a huge olive grove. For a long time I looked at the silvery treetops leading into the distance, and suddenly they appeared to me like a sea of molten metal, like the Lake of Halkolivan, in which all human knowledge had dissolved, including the words of all the languages of the world. I understand that this primordial mass of fire was waiting for me, that I had to become its Demiurge. And at that moment I learned to see the living letters of the Hebrew alphabet! Alef, Chet, Shien ... they consisted of fire and wind, of honey and wine, of filthy truth and falsehood, and with the help of them you could do whatever you wanted, because they were at the base of the universe.

The vision did not last long, but I was changed in that moment, I understood that the waters of this red-hot sea would indeed have to part for me. At that moment a wind rose, the trees began to rustle, as if to warn me, "Quiet, this is beyond your strength, calm down," but I raised my arms to heaven and cried out in rapture, because I had seen the rock from which we were hewn, had glimpsed into the depths of the quarry from which we emerged in the face of Abraham and had seen Sarah

Olive trees grow very old, and when a person suddenly learns to understand them, my cry of joy rings out to them.

I was living here and there, but my half-disturbed mother somehow found out where I was and from time to time played send letters to me through random people who had to go my way. I didn't reply. She was still resentful about something, offended, and she wanted me to learn to live according to the old ordinances and live a sedentary life....

I found out that my stepfather Joseph had died.

A few more months passed, during which I went significantly green as an orator; I even gained the first followers, who, by the way, did not stay with me for long at that time. However, I was no longer alone. Men and women, youngsters, very young girls flocked to me. They hit it off with me because I truly loved them, could comfort them and find words they had never heard before, even from the most intimate of loved ones.

I wanted to live as I lived, to get closer to the truth, and not root in the earth, like a form, not build a shelter for myself, like a wild animal. I wanted to be free from everyone. I wanted to be myself.

But as I said, God sent me the victim of a double.

People began to speak of him in Galilee, in Samaria and in the land across the Jordan.... He lived in the desert. It was claimed that he fed on only locusts and wild honey, could not read and had such a sharp mind that he could read people's minds.

He claimed to be the heir of all the prophets, lived according to the law of Moses, even came to Jerusalem and mocked the venerable men of the Sanhedrin, whom he referred to as the viper's spawn of the poisonous snake.

That all made sense, but.... I was the one to unmask him! But I lacked the guts for that at the time, I am ashamed to say. No, not the guts, but the ingenuity... The Sanhedrin, of course, was highly indignant at his statements.

Yes, he looked like me.

And I spent the whole night trying to see him as soon as possible. I was alone. Friends and helpers wanted to come along, but I decided to put myself to the test. One on one with this John.

At dawn, after a long road, my right sandal tore off. I took off both sandals and threw them into the bushes.

Early in the morning I arrived at the Jordan River. I was alone, barefoot, tired and starving. All along the bank, among the bushes, in the shade of palms and cypress trees, people were lying and sitting, many of them still sleeping; there were tents, covered with canvas, with walls of woven branches; there were horses tied to trees and camels, campfires were burning, food was being cooked, and a mist hung over the waters of the Jordan. There were hundreds of people. The common people, soldiers, vagabonds, book people, officials and Essenes, all tired of settled life. Children were running around. All around stretched a lifeless valley, you could not find anything to eat anywhere, and the people did not last long there. John performed his ritual with them, and they went back again, to Galilee, to Samaria, to the other side of the Jordan....

I watched a woman pluck a pigeon caught with a trap by the nearest fire and prepare to cook soup from it.

At the waterfront, a group of people waited their turn to walk up to John, who was standing in the river, in a shallow place, up to his belt in the water.

He was hairy and dark.

As someone that John had approached, the latter immersed the convert in the water, laughing and mumbling unintelligible words.

Paying no attention to the people waiting for their turn to undergo the ritual (a few began to grumble and point at me), I threw off my clothes and walked into the river wearing only a loincloth. John had just finished yet another ritual, an old woman scrabbled up against the bank crying with happiness, shamefully covering with her hands her breasts that pranced in her wet clothes.

With his head raised to heaven, John called out something in a language he probably only understood himself, and then saw me. His eyes resembled those of a butcher fed up with his work. He looked fearsome: dark brown from the sun, with half-dead fur on his shoulders, hairy like a lion (but the lion from the lineage of Judah, that was me). And he did not doubt for a moment the veracity of what he was doing. Yes, he believed in what he was doing much more than I did. I longed for a life as easy as extravagant, for love, for boundless freedom, while he did not think of rest, did not care for his body, driven as he was by an impetuous power, by a blind thirst to stir the air incessantly with cries about the salutary power of river water and the necessity of general humility.

As soon as we looked at each other, as soon as that happened, everything was decided. We didn't have to argue or prove anything to each other. He understood at once that he had to submit to me, even though I was alone, while on the shore a whole crowd had gathered, enchanted by him.

This is how it can go when wild animals encounter each other, or gladiators. Not for nothing is it called that one can lose a duel beforehand.

John, this strong man, as if actually sent down from above, fed the fire of my game, of my play! And this was also lawful, people to whom I had introduced that game either immediately conceived a hatred for me or immediately became part of the mystery. Fortunately I turned out to have John in my power, otherwise I don't know how this encounter ended. John's followers could have foolishly killed me to defend their teacher.

They were ready for anything. But John humbled himself. In other words, the predatory letter had swallowed another, smaller one. The victory was mine.

"Of him the prophets spoke, of him!" cried John hoarsely, pointing at me.

A legion of faces turned to us.

'Behold the man who is incomparably superior to me,' John continued.

'My name is Jesus!" cried to the people. 'John saves you with water, but I with the spirit! Even if all the water of the world will be poisoned by human suffering, the spirit will remain intact!'

"Yes, yes! Voices sounded from the bank.

I heard their voices, I saw their jubilant faces....

Who were these people? The same ones who surrounded me as I traveled from town to town. Women with empty eyes, meek youngsters, willing to do anything but labor, men of age, under different circumstances willing to waste their last sesterces on hataera....

I returned to shore while John continued his work in the water. But those around me now regarded me with different eyes, with unconcealed awe. I was given something to eat and wine to drink, I settled down in the shade of a cypress tree on a straw mat that someone caringly spreading out under me. A woman came and sat next to me, looked at me in adoration and ran her hand through my hair. I thought her young body was worthy of me in every way and told her to visit me that night....

People came to me and touched me, repeating the words John had spoken, "Of him the prophets spoke, of him!

John had done the right thing. He did not become just another preacher I had eliminated, but a part of my teaching.

After his meeting with me, John continued to water people to share eternal life, in Enona, near Salim. I do not believe that he really gave the people the eternity that is given to everyone from birth. They just liked it, those people and him. But at each of his water rituals he now told of me. That, of course, made me more familiar and stronger.

Chapter 3 - The desert

I was alone in the desert, and dizzy with hunger. I felt light-headed, hadn't eaten anything in three days. During the day it is horribly hot there. The earth covered with yellow sand, chalk and gravel smelled hot, and I sought shelter in a cave near a gorge, with a spring at the bottom, and at night I slept under the bare sky on a piece of camel skin. Shortly before dawn I suddenly awoke. In the distance before me could be seen the dark gray outlines of mountains, and the constellation Axis was in predatory anticipation of something, just as in the times of the ancestor Job.

'I must seek solitary seclusion so that nothing can interfere with my prayer,' I had said to people, and they were waiting for me there, an hour's walk west, on the border of the desert, in someone's orchard. Among them were my two new wives. They would soon give birth. I did not know how many children I had at that time. It was a coming and going of women with us.

'One day this stony earth will be a sphere of love for the people of Israel, and we will discover the unquenchable fire of truth.' What an empty, pompous becoming, I thought, as I gazed up at the night sky, but if you put such things in front of the people, propping them up with the prophecies of the inspired prophets, you can get the crowd in tow for anything, even for yet another revolt against Rome, which was bound to be a fiasco. Amusing.

Just as my round-woven chiton had no seams, so what I told people had to have no weaknesses. I had finally mastered the art of the orator, the chief craft of modern man. The world has changed greatly in recent years, people were yearning for something new, and I felt this all the more clearly because I was not in one place, but knew what people were saying, the thousands of people throughout the Jewish land.

I had taken a few slices of ginger with raisins with me to the desert; I broke off some of that occasionally and chewed on it when I really couldn't take any more. I had just then gotten used to eating my fill and even gained a little weight. I paid for virtually nothing, everything was bought (and an occasional stolen) by my people. All that was required was to maintain a sense of guilt and willingness to repent. In the process, I had grown a little tired of my regular entourage by now. Moreover, my reputation as a teacher had to be validated not only in verbal duels with scribes, but also in deeds, for example, a short trip through the desert, which many great teachers did. That is why I was in that desert.

And yet I had a great appetite....

I wonder, I thought, what David was keeping himself alive with when he was hiding from King Saul in the desert.....

I started thinking about food. I shouldn't have done that, shouldn't give in to the temptation to dream away at the thought of good food. After all, I had come to the desert to pray. But...

The tender goat meat sizzling on a casserole with saffron, pepper and shaved nuts....

My God, I thought, to get rid of that goat meat with saffron, direct Thy gaze upon me...! Why is Thou hiding from me, what are Thou waiting for?

But all around it remained silent, there were no ordinary night sounds, because there was no grass growing on the naked stones, there were no cicadas in them, nor any other small creatures. Nor did you hear the cries of birds feasting on these little creatures... A perpetual soundlessness, filled with wisdom, with wisdom that was of no use to anyone, because it was impossible to fully share it anyway.

There was no sound. If only a jackal had howled! If only ghosts of terrible, unforgotten sins had wandered about.

Suddenly I developed an irrepressible craving for a simple, fresh meal: finely chopped endive parsley and onion, all of it seasoned with honey, salt, vinegar and oil. Served with a piece of sheep's cheese. And prepared by the tawny hands of a young blue-eyed Jewess from a distinguished family ... from a girl who had joined us, but had not yet been spoiled by anyone in my entourage.

I wanted to drink a glass of jain jasjan, a piece of oven-cooked lamb cut off with a thick sauce of grape syrup, like clotted blood.  I was craving olives on vinegar....

Or just fresh-baked cereal, with oil on top!

The hermits of Qumran spent their entire lives in the desert. Were they not the true ascetics? Then what was I? A pathetic dreamer who pretended to be the herald of truth. But if I could give people hope I had to.

What was the point of being in the desert just for the salvation of your own soul?

Sometimes I thought with dismay that the whole life of man was exclusively subordinated to food, as if the chains of exciting events, birth itself, and death, triumph and love, were only necessary for the periodic appeasing of hunger. Reportedly, even the renowned poet Quintus Horatius Flaccus had stated that he lived primarily for growing basil and cabbage.

I lay under the heaven of the prophets and saw smoked beef ribs, bean soup with onions and spices, fruit pies, warm unleavened breads with honey paste of almonds and pistachios ... one feast after another passed by my mind's eye.

Food! The enjoyment of food! Even Moses before his death sang about the honey that oozed from a rock and the oil from a cliff of flint. And also about the foaming juice of the grape.

I heard a kind of slapping and gurgling, the growling of a tame leopard and the tinkling of its chain, I saw naked slaves carrying baskets of rose petals to scatter them on the marble floor between the pillars, and there, in the clouds of these petals, began a frenzied sexual intercourse, with the rapid succession of prodigious asses, a buttery well-being. And immediately to the noisy outpouring, eating, eating....

A boys' choir sang to me!

No, no, it was the dead reverberation of the desert. No wonder even the prophet Elijah wanted to die of despair there, sitting under a juniper bush.

"My God! I shouted with all my might. 'I am here, I am alive, I am real, Lord! I am a real person, don't you understand that? What is this curse? Why doesn't anything change? Open my eyes!

How many of these cries had not swallowed up the desert of Judea? But I stood up resolutely on my mat and went down on my knees, hands folded on my chest in prayer. I was filled with the certainty that something would be revealed to me here and now.

I peered tensely ahead of me, and upward, awaiting the divine presence, when suddenly the stony desert lit up, though the sky remained dark and the moon then extinguished, as if Apophis had swallowed her up, and out of nowhere appeared a creature that looked like a human being, coarsely sculpted out of dough. Or like a white bloated mummy. Its head looked like a ball of curved glass instead of a face, in which my little mirror image flashed. The mummy moved unusually slowly, lingering in the air for a moment after each step, carrying in her hand a thin rod with a rectangular piece of cloth with purple and white stripes and stars on it on a deep blue background, but not with six points, as in ornaments of the temple, but with five rays.

I stiffened, trying not to give myself away. I experienced no fear, and the mummy paid no attention to me, or she did not see me, which was more likely. She planted her staff right in front of me among the stones, the enigmatic colorful fabric curiously retaining its sprawling state even though there was no wind. The mummy began to move away with fluid steps, as if weightless. Attached to her back was a kind of white box. I looked after her, and it seemed to me curiously that the whole world was suddenly an extinct mass of stone, as on the second day of creation.

The fifth day in the desert dawned. Across the naked hills I walked back to the people; I could no longer stick there, I might go mad or be captured by Bedouins who would enslave me. I might just weaken so much that I would find no strength to return... I might become prey to the disciples who could turn up in these parts.

My people would naturally look for me,

But would they find me too?

What did my nightly vision mean? Has it been a dream? Of which no trace had been left in the dust? Who was this noiseless being, swollen up like a drowning man? It had meant no harm to me and had done its thing, but for the sake of what forces? But I believe it was a good sign. Maybe you can't call it a true revelation, but this wasn't bad either. What this white, elegantly floating mummy had done was reminiscent of ... the affirmation of victory. Perhaps it was the triumph of the spirit over the body?

The sun rose higher, the shadows of the rocks grew slower and shorter, obeying the eternal rhythm that made all that lived dance to the inexorable whistle of death. I walked to the west, across the barren barren earth, but once a year, even there the miracle took place: on those rare days in spring, when it rained on the heights near Jerusalem, the desert underwent a transformation, the racket of life sounded from the gorges, then streams of water rushed forth and the whole area was covered for a short time by tender greenery.

Likewise, once the heavenly floodgates open and we, vagabonds and troublemakers of the soul, become the ones they really are. We discover ourselves, and to our glory the fragrant vapors rise. We are with ourselves, and therein alone is the glory of all the kingdoms of the world. We need only a splash, a drop of boldness, and the rocks around us turn into loaves, and on the withered wood of soulful faith the white and pink flowers sprout.

On my return from the desert, I learned that my fiery friend John, who had stirred up the waters of the Jordan, had been taken into protective custody by order of King Herod and was in the prison at the fortress of Macheron. It saddened me, but I had to hand it to his oppressor, Herod had long stood idly by. Why had John publicly accused the king of seducing his brother's wife and marrying her, after sending his own wife into the forest? What did we have to do with such passions? Herod was a weak king with no real power, enslaved by his dependence on Rome, and did his history with his wives now have to be hung on the great bell? Every day things happen in Palestine of which the mere thought was horrifying, but God's wrath had been directed at poor Herod through John. That was as obtuse as lashing out with a sword at the rooster who gave his own chickens a turn.

Chapter 4 - Capernaum

I wandered around Galilee and there more and more people came to listen to me. Every morning I greeted dawn somewhere on a lonely hilltop or on a steep rock. There was nothing like the moments when the air was still fresh and the sun with its slanting, inescapable rays urged every bird to answer, every scorpion, every mouse. One creature answered the sun by dying of thirst on the stones, another by turning its flank to the comfortably warm light. This language knew only three words: life, death and sacrifice; indeed, the Egyptians slaughtered their cheeks and geese in honor of the sunlike Amon by communicating with him in this way.

But every sunrise of mine there on those heights was darkened by the thought that people would again that day look for ways to hurt me, to bring out some wacky truth, to shout about divine ordinances, of which they knew no more than a pig of Hellenic sculpture, and in the process would blaspheme, bear false witness, try to exterminate a neighbor's crops and burn his house to ashes. Because of the higher purposes, of course, in which they believed. If you took those illusions together, you could destroy the world.

In doing so, I saw little evil in many things prescribed by the laws of Rome. Take land treason, for example. What was that? What was the land? The gardens, the valleys and the mountains? The animals? Or the people? But which ones? You could only betray someone, not everyone. Where three or more people gathered in the name of righteousness, God was not there, because any random crowd was only led by madness.

And so if God did not exist, he was not there in a double sense. And if God did exist, he was not insane. He was often ruthless and cynical, he liked to leave you hopeless, but the showrooms of true madness were ruled by the lowest demons.

And were you allowed to believe in the tablets of the law, according to which an infant who distinguished himself by exceptional wantonness was to be deprived of life? I doubted it, for wantonness was a coincidence permitted by God. Who knows, maybe one day the infant with six fingers on each hand would lead his people out of slavery. A hand with six fingers would clasp the sword of righteousness all the more firmly.

And what then involved two heads or three legs... We had to leave the infant in this the possibility of survival, without caring more about it than about a bright healthy baby. Not to elevate the care of a monstrosity to a small cult ... After all, a spoiled monstrosity could grow into a greater tyrant than a quiet crisp that was not spoiled.

When I had welcomed the sunrise, I descended to the people. There they were usually already waiting for me, demanding my words of comfort, kissing my hands, weeping, lamenting, grieving and bringing me gifts. But sometimes that was so hard for me! One kind word, and it was like moving a heavy stone. I was lonely, even in the midst of the crowd. Even when I slept with two women at once.

It could also happen that I would sit on a mountain for a long time, in rigidity, until it began to bake, then one of the disciples would come and get me and take me down to the men and women, the elated dunces and skeptics who would ask incongruous questions, argue with me until they fell down, scribes would demand explanations on difficult places of Scripture and accuse me of twisting doctrine, apostasy, say I was a lying airhead. Sometimes these kinds of conversations left me with no time to eat anything.

During my stay in Capernaum, on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, I lived in a house whose entrance was guarded by two marble lions. Before that, I had never even been allowed to enter such a wealthy dwelling. The house belonged to a widow, as wealthy as she was devout, of an army chief who had been killed in putting down the rebellion of Tacfarinas, in Africa, and she allowed me to live in that house, with three slaves from Gaul and a hired free cook at my disposal, while she herself moved in with her parents.

Those slaves, of course, I immediately granted them freedom, but they did not believe in it and continued to voluntarily fulfill their duties regarding the care of the house and garden.

Well, that suited me just fine, too. After all, I'm not one of those Jews who locks his slave in a tub of moray eels for a broken vase or puts the brand of serva on the buttock of a youthful barbarian. But what if someone at the price of his own life gave freedom to an entire people, and those people did not accept that gift...?

The widow liked it when I prophesied in the local synagogue and before crowds of fishermen reproached the teachers of the law there for not knowing the entire Torah by heart.

As before, many angry people came to me, seeking sustenance, and also fugitive criminals. The man, for example, who had seduced a Vestal virgin in Alba Longa and she had sought refuge here, so far away. Amazing! I attracted all sorts of unruly people. One and all refugees. But I profited from that too, because they spread the rumor about me and that then reached the good people who could assist me with money. A few words, and you had everything in your power, you were on horseback. They were looking for a new life, please! Freedom from property, freedom from squeezing family ties and (shush!) Freedom from the laws of Rome.

I liked it in Capernaum. A green city. Orchards everywhere, palms, and vines came right up to the blue waters of the lake that teemed with fish... Oleanders, myrtle bushes with white flowers. And you had no scorching heat there, while you could harvest all year round. Not for nothing do they say that in Galilee it's easier to grow a bunch of olive trees than in arid, desert Judea one small child.

In the courtyard of the widow's house was a fountain with a floor decorated with a beautiful mosaic: leviathan, among him obliging little sea monsters. When I washed in this fountain I always quickly got the feeling that I had slept too long or had been too generous with the wine the night before. The east-facing windows

gave stunning views of the lake and the blessed land around it.

And the young women, of course. The house was open to everyone. If God did exist then, in which they did exist His chief tool

At that time I had three permanent disciples whom I trusted: Andrew, Simon, and the childishly naive Judas. These disciples had been sifted out of hundreds of casual and useless men, ecstatic simple-minded people who wanted to see a perfect being in me, but who, to their great dismay, were shown a man who indulged in the fruits of the earth, who drank undiluted wine and comforted attractive women, preferring mulattoes. He angered, he laughed and was not inclined to measure everything and everyone, unlike so many itinerant prophets. And, of course, he did not distinguish himself by his hatred of Rome, for the depth of one's hatred for the enemy was the measure of holiness for the simple people....

Neither then nor later did I ask my disciples where they had come from, where their cradle had stood and where their parents lived, nor did they reveal this to me. I only knew some obvious things about them: Andreas was less dissolute than the others, and also quick to resent; the awkward Simon was good-natured and droll: Judas was younger than the others and very attached to me, could respond to every request of mine without grumbling. And each of them was very clever and shrewd where all of us were concerned.

These three disciples of mine had foolishly led all of Capernaum to believe that I had come to liberate the Jews and become a king. That did shock me. The Romans could have a lot, but they would not relinquish their power, even if it was claimed (in words only!) by a ludicrous little king from some negory. Not for nothing did Emperor Tiberius say that power was a wolf he held by the ears. And this was compounded by the fact that there was a permanent detachment of legionnaires stationed in Capernaum.

Even though I had not spoken about primitive power, no, about something quite different: enjoy what is there, every minute, and when you leave, take nothing superfluous with it. Freedom from prejudice is more important than a king's throne! You can sing songs in a cage and still keep joy in your heart.

In Capernaum, I applied myself to the art of healing; the local doctor Aprim taught me in it. At that time I had too many patients on my roof who needed to be helped not only by their souls. Aprim told me that he had once worked in the house of the proconsul of Syria. He honored Aesulapius, related to me with a friendly composure, and was sometimes even compassionate (when I was sad), because he did not take seriously what I usually said during my prophecies in the synagogue. No doubt he had seen a lot of vice from his life. Apparently there were other reasons why he did like me. He loved the Roman and Greek sages more than the wisdom of the law, including Titus Lucretius Carus, and often quoted from his ''Of the Nature of Things.''

The sage Aprim denied the fear of death, death itself and life after it, only matter, according to him, was eternal and endless, and after death the human body stupidly took on other forms of existence.

Tetanus, epilepsy, hysteria, fever, asthma... These words became a reality for me. The fight against them was successfully (but mostly lacking thereof) fought by other words: veins, powders, potions of medicinal herbs.

I found out with which herbs to treat an open wound, with which to treat a closed one, and to what extent to prescribe medicines to drive off the fluid of a dropsy or to retain the blood of bleeders, or to halt the tering and consequent emaciation.

A great thing, the treatment in alternating hot and cold baths.

Good thing they didn't come up with bully pulpits.

It was sad when people came to me with old people, whose minds had withered with time, and then asked me to heal them. But I myself would have been king of the world to take the place of such a graybeard, which was wonderful! You were in blissful ignorance, in a world of dreams and cozy childhood fears, you didn't understand anything and were happy when they didn't forget to feed you. Even if I could have given such old people back the disposition of conscious life, I would not have done so. I already had enough on my conscience, so why would I bring this sin upon myself?

Chapter 5 - Blood

It was getting light. My drunken disciples lay here and there on the ground. Everywhere swung the remnants of a drag party. On rugs beside them lay the naked women whose names there is no point in recalling now. We had been having fun well into the night. There was plenty of young wine and other goodies, while street musicians played and sang for us. The feast had been put on for us by the Galilean Merchant Iran, whose caravans traveled along the shores of the Mediterranean to Egypt, Libya and Syria.

He was interested in everything: wheat, fruits, felt, linen, leather and skins, Mycenaean pottery and Tyrian purple, myrrh, spices, oil, Odrysian slaves, wine and weapons. He converted that into dinars, drachmas and aurei with amazing tenacity and was as rich as Croesus.

This big kid with his red beard was oversaturated, wanted something special, and we offered him that opportunity, for a while he cared about us. His impishness was accompanied by a glorious haughtiness and generosity.

The Jewish law bored him to death, the Roman gods seemed to him rightly strange, the Essene monks put him off with their inhuman asceticism, he laughed at the revived reverence among the educated people of Galilee for Isis, and so he decided to seek rapprochement with us. I think the Orphics could have seduced him with their sprightly mysteries, but of them he had no knowledge.

I looked tenderly at my sleeping pupils and women, walked into the garden, took a pee, drank fig water from the jug and fell asleep again on the widow's side.

I was reminded of this carefree symposium because it had taken place not long before our departure from Capernaum, from the House guarded by the stone lions. Why? I thought then that a passionate prophet living in a large and comfortable house was unconvincing, and didn't want to stick where it was too good. I thought people needed a wandering Messiah who slept under a bush, who had contempt for earthly blessings. Now I understand that is not so, people believe in anyone who encourages dreamy ignorance. But back then I was more naïve.

And we moved on.

Here it is worth recalling what happened in Cana, in the Galilean town among the wheat fields on which giant boulders rise far apart, like remnants of the games of the ancient giants. As soon as we arrived there (it was evening), I was accosted by several people to go to a wedding feast with them. They said the son of the local judge was getting married. They talked to me without awe, a touch mockingly even. My disciples tried to talk me out of going there, but I went anyway and took Judas with me. The rest of the students wandered around town, trying to figure out how we could make a living and if there wasn't danger somewhere.

I did not like weddings; they were the most absurd thing in the world. Instead of bewailing their fate in a lonely place somewhere, the newlyweds spent money entertaining hungry guests.

And so I had ended up among them. I was given a seat at the table. I was famished, but was patient and did not plunge into the food; that would not have been a pretty sight. The house in which everything was taking place seemed to me very unsociable, throaty and gloomy, even though there were candles burning on the table and lamps hanging from the ceiling. I had long since noticed that I had the ability to sense whether I was in a good house or a bad one, where it did not depend at all on the owners. The very place on which the walls of the house were erected, they could tell you against it.

The cups were emptied, the speeches usual in such a case were made, terrible in their complacent piousness,

in their expectation of prosperity. No one asked me about anything, and that was unusual.

Gradually I strengthened, after eating meat with vegetables.

Judas nibbled on an apple.

After a while, the wedding master of ceremonies suddenly declared that the wine had run out. Everyone hushed, turned their gaze to me, and an old woman with a hook nose said with sly eyes, "Jesus, what now? The wine stores are already closed. We heard that you can prepare joy for the people. Make sure our joy can continue.'

At that moment I understood that everyone did know who I was, and people had been looking forward to my coming. The rumor that I was headed toward Cana had advanced on me, and people wanted to witness a miracle, or prove that I was a liar.

Judas no longer nibbled on his apple, but whispered to me that we had better leave.

But that would have been unwise. One would have interpreted that as impotence....

'Jesus, do not hide from us what you are able to do,' the same woman sailed on with manufactured gentleness. 'Why put your light under a bushel? Rather, let it shine before everyone, standing on a solid receptacle. Pour us light and wine, Jesus... You see the empty jugs against the wall, can you fill them?'

I looked at the row of jugs, which looked more like lampante jugs than wine containers, and I knew what I had to do.

'Bring me a clean and sharp knife, and a drinking cup,' I said to the master of ceremonies.

He eagerly complied with the request.

'I drink you with wine drunker than a Roman senator!' Spoke I, and I drew the knife across my left wrist, trying not to press too hard, so as to get the blood flowing but not damage the tendons.

A single guest cried out.

I aimed the stream of blood at the goblet and waited until it was one-third full. The women, the bride included, anxiously turned their heads away or slapped their hands in front of their faces.

An old woman came running whimpering to bandage my hand with a cloth.

'Then drink now! Everyone! Taste of my blood! Even if you wet your lips and lick them!" I cried, feeling how the event paralyzed them and brought back to me the strength and self-assurance.

The guests obediently passed the goblet around, and after a few minutes the general excitement had risen to the top. They became drunk from the mere realization that they were drinking living human blood.

And everyone put on a wedding song.

Judas began to cry.

A clean-shaven man whom I was later told had been sent by the Romans, she mockingly said to the master of ceremonies, "Good wine is always poured first, but you have kept it until this moment...

Well, blood is miraculous, it is the most perfect component of our organism and brings together the four roots that make up all that exists: earth, fire, air and water. In some people the ratio of those roots is different from others. For example, my blood is so powerful because it contains more fire.

But the main thing, of course, is that the two souls of man are dissolved in the blood, the soul animalis and the soul vegetalis, therefore a person who drinks blood has nothing else of need. Blood is the ideal source of life.

Ridiculous, if that wedding was only organized to find out what I was capable of.

Chapter 6 - The letter

That day I went with my disciples to an olive grove not far from Cana. We had no women with us. We decided to have lunch there, a little away from the sick, weak and nauseous who flocked to me. We had brought all kinds of food and spread it on a cloth on the ground. We drank wine from Askol and we were all in high spirits. In addition to Judas, Simon and Andrew, Phillippus and Matthew were permanently in my presence. The quiet, engaging Phillippus had abandoned wife and children for his irrepressible wanderlust; how Matthew had lived before meeting me, I do not know to this day. What appealed to me about this contemplative, gray-bearded man was his development, a rarity among truth seekers with no savings and rarely a roof over their heads. He was constantly diligently noting down what was happening to us, using papyrus and pieces of skin, as well as some Judaic manuscripts and mundane Roman documents that he had happened to be able to get his hands on. Matthew scraped away the old text to write again, or my whipped-up actions found a place among the lines of Latin: from trivial government deeds, promissory notes and wills, reports of tax collection and private letters. Where did Matthew get all that from? He appropriated all that through his ability to gain the trust of this and that, whether it was an illiterate order slave or a Roman business advocate. People felt sorry for him and believed him, and moreover he always referred to me. Whenever we left some small town, Matthew could bring a letter from someone with the beautiful vow to give it to Yelisej in Haifa, or Susanne in Hebron, but as a result a detailed description of our evening meal would appear on the cleaned parchment, or my exhortation to a remorseful murderer who might have acted justly by avenging a family member, but openly condoning murder was not something I wanted to do.

Now it so happened that Matthew never showed me his notes, and with time I did understand that they had little to do with reality, he created a wonderful world in which he felt like a fish out of water and cared little about the truth content. I understand that truth, after Aristotle, refers only to the union or separation of concepts, but when it comes to one's own life, the events of the undermoon seem highly real.

Anyway, that day we ate smoked meat in that Gaard, and sweets, drank strong sikera, and I was allowed to fall out of my den of an impeccable teacher for a while again. When the good hope had stirred our hearts, we set loudly to a fisherman's song, whose words were tender and rough at the same time, and therefore we did not at once take notice of the horsemen who were leading us from the road to Capernaum

approached.

It should be said that we were singing a joyful song of the fishermen of Galilee, not one of those slow lamentations like the fishermen of the Mediterranean make. I think it is because the Sea of Galilee does not make its fishermen long for home, they always see their familiar shores. 'Without letting go of the sweet-voiced cymbal, you, my friend, had a miraculous catch of fish,' we sang. 'The net, the spear, the harpoon and some sweet words, the spring month of nisan, the clean ones in your nets'.

There were five men. The captain, a Roman in rich equipment and fine tunic, rose from his horse, handed the harness to a helper, walked up to us and asked which of us was Jesus. Fighting my fear, I stood up, faced him and smiled as pleasantly as I could.

He had a handsome, nervous face. The courtesy with which he welcomed me surprised me, which was not peculiar to Roman army leaders when dealing with Jewish vagabonds; he balled his right hand into a fist, placed it against his chest and made a small bow. The gilded emblems of his belt sparkled, as did his breastplates and the smoothly polished hilt of his sword. This man of noble standing radiated danger, embodied the very nature of power, and for a moment I thought he had come to capture me, but then for some reason wanted to do so with maximum courtesy.

'My name is Marcus Sextus, commander of the auxiliaries,' he said. 'I have come from Jerusalem to ask you for help, because the number 10 brings me luck... That brings me to you.'

"What happened? I asked.

'My son has been sick for a long time, but now he is doing very badly. He is dying. You are my last hope. Doctors are unable to cure him, not those from here, not those from Egypt. I heard in Cana which way you had gone, that's how I found you...'

From the rest of my conversation with Marcus, I gathered that his seven-year-old son sometimes had seizures, fever dreams and visions. I asked what visions exactly. It turned out that last time the boy had cried out that he wanted to shed his skin, like a snake, to be born again, that the heavy skin prevented him from flying...encouragingly, in the process, he did not have a bellyache or vomit.

I understood that it was not a fatal ailment and was also hereditary; the tendency toward that kind of proposition was inherent in Marcus' own movements, in his manner of speaking and in his ecstatically gleaming eyes. The bottom line was that sometimes his son simply saw things as they actually were, which was peculiar to children, and they were often visited by people whose worst his parents could only suspect.

If time flows nowhere and the world is a fiery ball, as a wise man from the tribe of Ishmael once told me, then the son of Mark in his fever dreams could be anything, even the staff in the hand of the prophet Moses. That same staff that turned into a serpent. Yes, it was a difficult language, but it was the only one in which God spoke to us, when he wasn't too busy to say anything. And this language was incomparably higher than the suffocating reality that was worse than a severe illness.

Yes, I was not very sober at the time, but the famously frothy sikhera had made me extra confident, and I said sternly to Marcus, looking him straight in the suffering eyes, "Don't worry, your son is already better.

I was, of course, taking a risk. But it was not very likely that the child would suddenly die (after all, according to his father's words, he had gone through these attacks of fever several times), while my reputation as a teacher needed to be shored up; just as a vine, planted in the arid earth, needed constant watering, so too my image of teacher needed real miracles (as it turned out later no it the boy

indeed better and the attacks had ceased).

Marcus believed me, and changed storage. His face brightened. How did he get so much faith? It would have been enough for all the spiritual servants of the temple, including the head of the guard. It was truly amazing! But perhaps also deadly normal... faith in God, faith in a miracle, were one faith, the same thing that made prophets open their mouths, children be born, the faith that founded kingdoms and cities....

Mark pulled a double-folded papyrus leaf from the leather bag on his belt, reached out to me and said, "Now this letter does not reach its destination, so great is my gratitude, Jesus.

Then he made a bow, mounted his horse and left accompanied by his legionaries. When the horsemen were out of sight, Matthew, who knew Latin well, read the letter aloud, converting it into our language, and I have memorized every word, having reread it several times afterwards:

'Valerius is Gratus, prefect of the province of Judea,

To senator Publius Lentulus

You asked me about the state of affairs in the province. I understand that you need that for your new report to Caesar, which is why I gave you detailed notice of almost everything in my previous letter, and tried to keep it brief, because he does not like verbiage, to which, I am sorry to say, I myself have sometimes been inclined: both the climate and the people of Judea entrusted to me are so horrible that you unwittingly seek salvation in the regular writing of letters, comments and reminiscences, sitting in the coolness of the residence behind tall doors of cypress wood.

Thus I want to tell you, in addition to what is already known to you, of the danger emanating from the religion of the Jews. Their clergy may at any moment turn into army leaders and the cities into impregnable fortresses. They are fanatical and intransigent in the desire to please their deity who, in their opinion, teaches to hate Rome. Unfortunately, this deity does not allow itself to be destroyed, if only because it has no image. But all the life of the Jews is steeped in religion, and it is easier to prohibit by law the hot wind from rolling clouds of thorny plants through the desert than to prohibit these people from making offerings in their colossal temple, which is constantly being rebuilt and enlarged. Here plots are forged in every house of worship, in every square a prophet goes on a rampage, calling for something of freedom, even though these people cannot be free, they themselves are victims in the hands of their deity.

There is no doubt that the rabbis are the greatest troublemakers in this matter, which is why I used to replace the supreme cleric every year, even though this evoked even greater hatred toward me on the part of the people. I approved the candidacy of Anna Groes, but a year later he had turned into the equal of a petty tyrant who prophesied about "the voice of the blood of the people. After him I confirmed Ismael, the son of Fabius, in that position, and everything repeated itself. Afterwards, in those roles performed: Elisha, the son of Arian, Afterwards Simon... Since then and to this day Joseph is the supreme clergyman, nicknamed Caiaphas, and he is madly good-natured and wise, and on these two qualities, on these two pillars rests what we will call the 'mind.' Like his predecessors, Joseph rules over the Sanhedrin, which is something like our college of priests-pontiffs, who direct the religious life of the land and bicker year after year over this or that aspect of the shadow cast by a donkey. Joseph is a useful mediator between me and the people of Judea. We will see how it continues.

Besides, I am constantly engaged in the pursuit and destruction of gangs, led by desperate orators who hate me and their rabbis in equal measure. One such chatterbox and rascal, who brought no little grief to the people and wanted to insult me during interrogation, I killed with my sword, and it does no harm to recall that he had reportedly been a servant of King Herod in his youth:

Now in all probability both serve Pluto, in the realm of the dead. Where do they get these fiery Jews, for whom crime and revelation are one and the same? By the way, God gives this evil bull only short horns, and these ungrateful people may be cunning, but will never be able to speak to me from a position of strength.

May the condemned to death be forgotten, and I list here the rioters who roam freely, so that you may pass their names on to Caesar, should he suddenly wish to know them: Zechariah from Jaffa;; John the water saint; John the burning bush; Shelemiah the voice of God; Samuel, the son of Joseph; Theodosius from Chaloetsa; Joseph the Anachoreet (The vault to roams throughout the province with his cronies); Joseph the naked; Jesus of Nazareth; Joseph the potter; Joseph the martyr; Levi Great Lamp; Jonathan, son of Eshle Mia; Johanan, son of Zebedeeus; Nestia of Samaria (a murderer, exonerated by the sanhedrin); Avrea son of thunder; Bartholomew, son of Tammaj; Thomas Jehuda; Jeremiah the Wordsmith; Abraham Redbeard; Abraham, son of Levi (organized a Greek pogrom in Jaffa); Abraham Crier; the teacher from Macheron (His name is as yet unknown, pretends to be king); Theodotus Speaking Cedar; Samuel, son of Judah; Adej, son of Alfej; Arsam from Lidda; Jason Sacred Oak; Natfej Fish Eye; Theophilus Goldenmouth; Theophilus, son of Simon; Aviit Former Legionnaire; Savvaty of the Crimea (was the leader of a pirate gang, sentenced to death in absentia); Aviit, son of Joseph; Chavrius the raging; Simon Zelotus; in addition to Anna the Immaculate Mother from and Emmaus and Geula the eloquent.

Some are educated, but go barefoot and bareheaded, in order to impress gullible people, ostentatiously playing the role of martyr, some actually possess prophetic gifts (unfortunately, thieves can also make use of this divine gift), some are ordinary lunatics, while others again are as conscious as consistent enemies of Rome. And each of them considers it his duty to speak edifying words to the full. Obeying this, the people leave their homes, expose themselves to physical tribulations, lack sleep for nights on end, fast, lapse into morbid jubilation, distribute their possessions as alms, and also carry out acts of willfulness and other crimes. These orators cause unrest in the province and therefore pose a threat to the empire.

There is a sad irony of fate in the fact that I, prefect, am curtailed in my course of action, even though I could in a month round up all the false prophets and conspirators and put them to death, as Quintilius Varus did after the taking of Jerusalem, when he had 2,000 insurgents crucified. On one side there is Caesar's command, on the other the threat of riots that could take hold of the territory entrusted to me.

Sometimes I walk out onto the balcony of my residence in Caesarea, where there is always a sea breeze and you can do without a slave with a fan, look at the forest of motley ships in the harbor and catch myself thinking that I want to sail away from here at the first opportunity. I envy foreign merchants who are guests here for a short time and set sail again, without the need to see these faces and hear this language.

It happens that I catch a criminal and the Sanhedrin releases him. On top of that, the Jews, in the absence of even a few evil gods, elevate me to godhood and dream of poisoning me or stabbing me with a dagger.

The very nature of these people is such that, with a mouth full of virtue, they dream of revenge and holy war, because for them the Torah, the collection of local legends, replaces any development.

We can assist these people, but they will be willing to commit any crime, just to avoid exposing their impositions. They do not want to make friends with the gods, but believe they must submit to their one-headed deity, like slaves. They do not recognize civil laws and cannot mint two one-headed coins of the same weight. They do not even know that you can build a city according to a plan, to prevent it from becoming a chaotic accumulation of structures. They believe in the wails of insane people at the city gate, but do not recognize either medicine or public law. And among themselves there is no peace either, they have often come to me, accusing each other of blasphemy and demanding retribution, until instead of judicial investigation I put both accuser and accused in jail for a month.

As you see, I crave the counsel of the camera of Egeria here, but surely even she does not know what to do with the religion of the Jews, which it seems to me may soon change into something even more extravagant. My agitation in this letter is meant only for you, Publius,

I do not want Caesar to mistake me for a weak alarmist. No, I am bold, tough when necessary, otherwise I could not have led this barren province with its dark future for so long.

Your most dedicated

V.G.

Jerusalem, seventh month, 13th year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius.

This letter saddened me, and my students even more. It indicated that to the prefect of the province I was an enemy of the empire, and therefore to everyone else. My name had emerged from obscurity, one could reckon with me at any moment, and the only salvation from this was to stop bearing witness to the living God, to let my disciples go, to lie on the ground, as fak moshe rabeinu, taking another name... What reassured me, however, was the fact that the letter would not reach Rome (at least if it was not a copy), and the fact that Valerius Gratus

apparently did not dare to persecute the Jewish prophets without the Emperor's permission. I just had to get used to the fact that at any moment the hunt could be on for me, and not attach too much significance to it. I requested Matthew to keep the letter and strictly forbade him to ruin it with new annotation on top of the text.

I understood why Marcus had come to me; I was the tenth on the list of people who could help him.

To encourage my students, I urged them to marvel at the fact of what faith Mark was filled with, even though he was not a Jew. A man from the tribe of conquerors. A representative of the haughty and rapacious empire of Rome demonstrated a love that truly deserved God's love, and he, Mark, would share salvation unlike many indifferent sons of our kingdom.

What also pleased me was that my name figured in the letter, along with those of the highest clergy. As for the other names ... I had met some of these preachers, and I think they were not only harmless, but also stupidly unworthy of mention. Abraham Redbeard was a dead ordinary drunkard, albeit not without charisma; Theodotus Speaking Cedar was a pitiful dreamer who believed he had received divine revelation from a squirrel who lived in the cedar, while Geula The Well-spoken organized children's weddings, arguing that there was a large supply of Jewish souls piled up in the heavens that needed to be given bodies as soon as possible.

We stayed in the grove all day, and at sunset, when the rocky hills first turned golden and then, with the coming of dusk, red and violet, we went back to Cana, to one of those perfectly inconspicuous houses of which we had so many.

Chapter 7 - Jerusalem

Jerusalem is an evil city. She draws you in with her infinite amount of straight and rounded corners of buildings and crooked streets, with the noise of the crowds, the coal fumes from her furnaces that on a windless day bake everything in, she draws you in with the chance to see new things. The aromas of spices in the market and the stench of the meat stalls, the mix of sounds, peoples, the alliance of copper and silver money. Or suddenly eternal gold flashes up in the cautious hands of a merchant who counts his aurei a third time just to be sure. There are Syrians here,, Egyptians, Nabataeans, Mydians, Cadusians, cunning, depraved Hellenes; you will find lonely buyers and Jewish brothers from whom you should keep your distance, if you are cautious, don't doubt it, they will find a way to empty your knapsack under a plausible pretext, and if you are fat unlucky, they will pounce on you in a dark corner near a wine store and throw you in the snake puddle or in a ditch of garbage, there you will be eaten by the dogs, even when you are still breathing shock-shouldered. Here are the Roman dignitaries in purple-striped gowns, and the imperturbable tree-length legionaries, while the sicarius hates them and hides his dagger under his cape; here you can buy a girl for an hour or forever, or a young lad of any hue, and inexpensively sell a flock of stolen and falsely branded sheep. Stores with wares for every taste of a purse. Shouting, shouting. Crowds move along, the tawdry garb of pilgrims from the countryside, simple gray clothes of townspeople, linen chitons down to the ankles and gossamer oriental fabrics around rich women. The sun shines on the lances of a Jewish guard patrolling the streets. At the Temple, among the dispersing crowd, the fairy-tale expensive shell of a cleric, adorned with golden bells, suddenly shines forth. There it is, the great Temple on the mountain, the place where Adam was created! He rises above the tops of the paupers and the houses of neat people, he hangs above the helmets of the Roman horsemen, and with them he wraths them. The stones around his altar never become dry from the blood and fat of the best animals, the space between the horns of the moon are filled hundreds of times with light, but in his services the prayers do not silence and the lamps do not extinguish. 'He who has not seen Herod's Temple has not seen a beautiful structure,' people say, and they are not lying. The fantastic Temple, which belongs to no one, the centerpiece of all the little houses of Moses, where aromatic spices waft up day and night, smothers the fragrance of exposed meat. A quarter million lambs will be slaughtered there during the days of Passover, the ground next to the altar of smell has a slope for the drainage of water to wash away the blood. The giant pale blue progression of the Holy of Holies moves in the wind and attracts gazes. The temple, that is a possibility. The temple, that is an incisiveness. He is powerful.

Jerusalem is the city of dark basements and dark eyes. Endowed with a wild life force, perched on the Jewish desert soil, like a lizard on a stone made glowing by the sun.

I ended up in Jerusalem on the eve of Passover. With me were Judas, Andrew, Simon, Matthew and Philip, and we had come with a caravan of pilgrims and had left our wives and servants in Galilee.

Entering the city, I thought back with melancholy to my first Passover here, to my late stepfather Joseph, but as usual felt no warm feelings at the thought of my mother.

We spent the night in the Upper Town, in a wealthy neighborhood; we were given lodging by a lonely old man with whom Simon had become acquainted in the marketplace in the blink of an eye. He had promised the old man to help cure him of his gout. In the morning upon leaving, the old man reminded him of this, and I advised the man to soak his feet in a decoction of Jordan thistle, broom bush and the milk thistle.

The city was restless; the prefect's army troops had once again driven protestors from his palace. On the eve, a few zealots had been executed who, as always preparing for revolt, did not want to be mere birdies on a branch of an empire that was alien to them.

Yes, Jerusalem attracted me; I felt its power. It was if I could convince everyone that I was that messenger of whom the prophets had spoken. And what was God but the joy of encounter and delight? Intoxicating power and blissful peace. No one could rule the world justly: the scribes were overcome by their passions, the fasting Nazarenes by others, and the Roman government, which was just a machine under the cover of will-less Gods. And no one would say to the people of Israel: rejoice in peace, ye chosen ones! Spend no money on offerings in the temple, pay no taxes to the emperor. Be strong! Find a new way! Honor God with unleavened honey bread, with incense and song, such gifts are more pleasing to Him than slaughter and the knife in a sacrificial basket!

But the city was stronger than me. Jerusalem was a monster swallowed up by profound contemplations of all the stages of her own decay. Around my hands blue lightning seemed to creep, I was the passion of the Spirit and could light a candlestick with my gaze, but the sleep of Jerusalem was still too solid. An ox knew its master, a donkey its lord's manger, the bird its nest, but Jerusalem would not know me as yet.

I did decide to engage in dialogue with the city. I knew that I had to be an industrious and fearless teacher, and I did not let the fact that it was easier to get answers in conversation with a dead horse than with your own people and with the city that was its symbol.

That morning I made my disciples drink wine and led them all to the Temple. Matthew realized that we were not just going to pray and sacrifice, and he became terrified. He remembered Valerius Gratus' letter and reiterated that if anything happened, we would be marked as rioters and condemned. I reassured him.

We approached the East Gate of the Temple. On either side of it the stalls and tables of the changers were close together. I remembered how these greedy folks had cheated my parents years ago. A wave of indignation rose in me and the crowd of people recoiled from me, as if lit by an invisible fire, while the merchants and changers were afraid to look at me. Selfishness, it is one of the ugliest vices of us humans.

Changers cheated us endlessly, right next to our own Temple!

And the stench! The stench of the hundreds of heads of slaughtered cattle in the courtyard facing the holy of holies! The sheep, oxen and mountains of manure ... there you have the cherished good that the clergy dare to instill in the people.

The manure, the gluttony, the disbelief... The clinking of coins drowned out the singing of the Levites. The conceited greed for profit had won the day, the mosaic floors and porticoes were occupied by buyers and usurers, by hunters of oxen and sheep. The dung, the manure! Even the temple of Venus on Mount Erika was purer, and the pagans actually prayed there, and did not turn it into a smelly marketplace... Or at the temple of the Syrian goddess at Hierapolis....

Surely someone had to tell the truth! The ugly truth, that the silver in the Temple had turned black, and the wine of the Temple was spoiled, like stagnant water. But no, everyone was absorbed in this swirling stream. It was as if I was the only one who saw it all and was aware of it....

It was sunny, my heart beat faster after two cups of pure wine.

I told my students to stand and wait for me, grabbed a long leather leash from a counter of one such merchant and ran into the courtyard where the cattle were soulful. I screamed and swung the leash to chase the cattle and sheep to the adjacent street, each moment marveling that no one had stopped me yet. I slipped through the puddles of slurry, fell, stood up, flogged the animals under curses with my belt. The crowd watched me stunned and held its breath. After I had barred several cattle, I ran to the nearest changer and turned over his table of coins, then to a second one, where I did the same. In the sleeve of the next changer gleamed a knife, and I did not dare get too close to him. The excited crowd went wild, and I shouted to the changers, "This is my father's house! I am the son of God, do you hear! Don't make the temple more than a trading house! Tell that to your clergyman! My name is Jesus! Just remember that one, you bunch of greedy blockheads!'

I was surrounded by a terrified and offended crowd. But everyone understood that I was risking my life, and so they were involuntarily in awe of me. The changelings who had lost some of their money screeched. My students kept as best they could the prying eyes away from me, one or two shouted that they knew me and that I was a criminal.

'Why are the clergy, Levites and servants of the Temple exempt from all taxes?' I continued. 'Because they have turned people into cattle! But soon that will come to an end! The time is near!'

No one dared to grab me, and only because after running after the cattle and my falls, I was completely covered in manure.

An old, tall cleric approached, with a long, pitch-black beard; he grabbed me by the only slip of my clothing that had remained clean and growled, "Who do you think you are? Beast! Zero!

'I am the exorcist!" I roared, so that everyone around me could hear. 'You are polluted in ignorance! I destroy the temple of shit and erect a new one! Myself! With my own hands! And I waved my hands in front of the cleric's face, in front of his hideous, grease-ringed black beard, then exchanged a look of understanding with my disciples, and we thrust aside the potters and set off running.

Andreas sprawled, fell on the counter of a dealer in stiraksa and pigeons, which were flying back and forth in their overturned cages, shot up, pushed off the handler and caught up with us in one piece. At any moment, the guard of the Temple would emerge, and we would be there. Once we ran down Temple Mount, we dissolved into the small streets of the Lower City. No one came after us, and that was another one of those coincidences that allowed me to survive.

I was mentally exhausted, but understood that I could not have acted otherwise. Everyone was in fear, except Philippus, who managed to maintain his cheerful composure in a stunning way. Clean clothes were found for me and within the hour we had fled Jerusalem. I felt the hunger of the city; it was as if its stones were supporting the desire to drink my blood. Back to Galilee!

For I had said something horrible, something unimaginable to them, that I would destroy the temple, on which in the 46 years of its construction so many treasures were spent! Thousands of servants of the Law had built it with their own hands, because only they, the chosen ones, had the right to touch these lumps of white and green marble, and another tens of thousands of men who had lent a hand in the process... And in the face of all this triumph of moderation, reason and eternal rules, I stood... alone.

Now I think, was it worth building all that? Was that temple necessary at all? After all, one visit to a good physician was more beneficial to a suffering man than years of Easter sacrifice in lump sum, even if falsehood, stench and avarice had been expelled from this Temple.

Chapter 8 - Shamai

We decided to go to Galilee by road through Samaria. We were in a hurry, wanting to get as far away from Jerusalem as quickly as possible, and it wasn't until we arrived in northern Judea by the evening of the next day that we stopped to rest in an old olive grove by a stream, near the spot of Chaza-EL, whose inhabitants were famous for tracing their lineage back to King Zimra, who reigned for only seven days, but even more so because they knew how to make a frothy smokers of barley and hops and made deliciously spiced lamb dish from the oven.

The place had also caught the eye of other travelers, a little further on black and gray striped tents could be seen, women were cooking something, children were running around, cattle were grazing.

We installed ourselves a short distance away. Matthew lit a campfire and sat down to write something on one of his papyrus sheets. The rest of the students went to the village to get food, perhaps the famous local lamb. We still had some coin money left, even though we had spent only money in the last few days and had not preached a single sermon to bring money into the house.

Therefore, I had wanted to get myself out of Jerusalem as quickly as possible, without attracting attention, and then your head was not on collecting funds by giving fiery lectures.

Money never stayed in our possession for long, I let my students share with minus wealthy people, while we also denied ourselves a few things and tried to make every day a celebration.

I descended to the stream and washed myself three times with fresh running water. Then I did want to know what kind of people had pitched their tents so nearby, pointed my sheaths toward it, and when I came out I saw an old man sitting in an easy chair, under a thick half withered olive tree. The graybeard looked at me with such sorrow that it seemed to envelop him like a gray cloud, like a swarm of gnats.

The tree under which the old man had taken his seat was so old that he probably remembered the Babylonian captivity and King Nebuchadnezzar's warriors.

Compared to the man, I felt like a little boy. I wanted him to put his hands on my head and bless us, but that was a timid thought born of weakness and fatigue from the journey that I immediately dispelled.

"Who are you? Add the old man, and without waiting for my answer he continued, "I think I know. You are one of those people who think they own the future. Call me your name'

"Jesus of Nazareth," I said, "and how may I address your venerable gray hairs?

'Shammai,' the graybeard said.

I understood that I had before me the over-familiar lawgiver, of whom I had already heard as a child. The man had spent his whole life as an itinerant prophet, thus sharpening the spiritual life of the people, had been received by kings and great sages: people like him gave a Jew the joy of being a Jew, but he was harsh, at his whim a great many death sentences had been carried out for religious offenses that were considered trivial in other countries.

From the gray-haired man's bitter and surly face, it was clear that he was a very strong man, but that he was physically at the end of his rope, as were the time-honored truths of the Law whose light he had spent his life propagating.

When a curly-headed boy with a mighty physique noticed me, he came rushing over, apparently a grandson of Shammai, and he asked the old man if everything was all right, if I wasn't bothering him. Shammai signaled with a movement of his hand to leave, and the young man complied.

It turned out that Shammai's large family was staying in the tent camp, and now he was praying in solitude, seated in his heavy, carved seat of precious ebony that was emulated throughout the land. Even when he exchanged views with the tetrarch of antipa, he was reportedly seated in this same seat... And similarly, seated in his seat, he watched as the enemies of the Law were stoned who had previously been buried up to their shoulders in the earth.

"Come to me," Jesus said, adding, "I have heard of you.

I walked closer, thinking about how rumors of a new prophet were spreading through our country faster than virtuous custom.

"Do you know, my son, what concerns me most at the moment? Shammai asked.

"Then what? I asked, with a politely bowed head.

"The changing of the seasons. But true faith, that is not a season, it doesn't change, it just dies. If you want to change it, it dies. You are still young, but I see that much depends on you, Son of Israel. Do not allow our faith to turn to dust. Otherwise, our kingdom will never gain freedom and will be destroyed. Do you understand...?

I did find it amusing that this old man, who could barely breathe, was so worried about the entire kingdom, just yet another, as lore showed, in the inexorable process of rise and fall of all empires.

But I kept a reverent expression on my face and said "Avva Shammai, you live in constant fear of defilement and are willing to cleanse the sun itself of defilement. That helps you live. I also want to teach godliness, but quickly... Tell me, can you get up from that chair, stand on one leg and teach me the entire Law while standing on that one leg?'

Shammai's eyes shot fire, but he managed to suppress his anger. My mockery touched him. Then he heaved a resigned sigh and spoke, "I see that in my mind you reproach me with cruelty, but you do not say it. You are a windbag, Jesus, flippant, like bird down, but even your words are lightweight.'

"What should we do with heavy words, Shammai? I asked. 'Imagine how heavy it will be to carry the letters Aleph, Bet and Gimel with you, cast in tin and lead, considering how many words you say to people every day?

Shammai smiled. It did not look like an ordinary human smile; it was better to say that he passed from one grievous state to another, with a slight change of facial expression.

'Incidentally, that also has its uses, for such words can be recalled,' I continued. 'You put them back in your knapsack and you walk away; after all, we all regret words used too hastily from time to time.'

We hovered again for a moment and looked at each other. A woman brought Shammai a bowl of milk and removed herself again. He drank half of it, bent down, set the bowl on a small flat stone beside one of the legs of the black seat and took out from the folds of his robe a small amber pipe, and also a small pouch, containing kif, a dry Libyan herb, the smoke of which evoked pleasant thought and gave relaxation.

He put out a pipe, the woman called, and she brought him a coal from the fire to light the herb. He lit up another puff and reached out to hand me the pipe.

We took turns inhaling the intoxicating smoke, taking a small sip from his bowl each time, and it was good. Reconciling with everything, I then thought that maybe Shammai was my real father. After yet another puff, I became dizzy and sat down on the floor, next to the black couch.

'You are a mouse in the cooking pot, Jesus,' Shammai said.

I found that curiously funny and burst into laughter.

'According to the Law,' Shammai said unhurriedly, 'the mouse will make the pot unclean, the pot will make the person who eats from it, and this person will make the other people unclean.' But you're right that godliness is often the mother of fear. And it's better to be a brave living mouse than a dead cat who has never committed any sin. Look, I'm old and pious, and what do I buy?

'You have disciples,' I said, trying to cheer him up. 'They live in many planes, and they all name their children Shammai.'

"You know," Shammai replied, "that on the land harvested by caring hands, stones grow?

"Yes," I said, "they say it happens when a cold night alternates with a warm one, and the earth pushes out the stones.

'Thus, all students are like those stones, which always grow by themselves, separate from us,' Shammai concluded sadly.

By now it had become dark, but we continued to sit and talk for a long time. Shammai's women brought a lamp, lit it and went to hang it on a branch of the olive tree. The lamp was immediately surrounded by tiny gnats, and I thought these tiny winged creatures were like naive pilgrims reaching for the feast of light, to burn in it.

When I said goodbye, Shammai gifted me his amber pipe.

Yes, yes, I thought, as I fell asleep by the campfire, beside my disciples, Shammai bestowed comfort on the Jews throughout his life, like a bitter balm, but his teaching lacked any divine infusion, it was like ashes in a golden husk of haughtiness. And I was a dead ordinary man, I cared about the pleasures of the stomach and love, was a friend of martyrs and sinners, but did bestow on men a rapturous doubt, for after all, it was this alone that caused true new life to be born.

Chapter 9 - Zajin

After my conversation with Shammai, I dreamed that I had built a temple of money that resembled the tomb of an Egyptian king; it was made of air, yielded profits, and everyone who visited it knew happiness and prosperity. It must be said that this lasted only for a certain time, until later everything collapsed, as if the cornerstone had been pulled out from under the temple.

But what was eternal? Everything dissolved into an abyss.

What it came down to was that people brought money to us that we promised to return at a profit, and each such deposit was equivalent to a brick in the wall of this speculative structure. For example, a man named Elisja gave me three circles, and a month later he got back four, without having to do anything for it, spending his time in idleness in happy anticipation. Where did we get the money to give to Elisja? And what was it all for? Quite simple: in one month we collected from the people an amount large enough to pay out the promise because many did not claim their money, but entrusted it to me again to get it back.

We opened a kind of store, and people brought us coins, castings, precious and semi-precious stones, and precious jewels. They even arrived with cattle, and even with slaves, but we took neither of those, because it was difficult to flee from the city unseen with a troop of slaves and a flock of sheep.

The moment we had gathered a considerable sum, my disciples and I quietly disappeared, to start again from scratch somewhere in another city. From Bethania we went to Herasa, then Tyre, and so on. Part of the profits made were distributed to talkative poor, to live up to my reputation, and the rest went on what we called simple human pleasures.

In this dream I was pursued by no one, no one complained about cheating the prefect of the city we had left, and that money brought us such happiness that it even strengthened my faith in God.

Andrew bought himself a splendid house in Caesarea, the fisherman's son Simon acquired himself a senatorial seat in Rome (I didn't want to get into that even in my dream), Matthew became I ecdosis and opened a scriptorium where texts were copied by specially trained people; he had a house built for that purpose in Jerusalem which, with its extensive collection of scrolls, was not inferior to the famous library of lucullus. Judas married the daughter of a wealthy dignitary from Judea and devoted all his time to the study of the stars and the compilation of a map of the heavens, while Philippus created in Jerusalem a lupinarium, as fantastic as it was expensive, for patricians passing through, where intelligent but destitute young Jews could also be served free of charge.

And I became a poet and wrote only in eloquent Latin, most of whose letters were cast from pure copper, not from tin and lead, like the Hebrew alphabet. I gained a large number of new pupils, because my fame increased and no one chased me, people were not afraid to seek rapprochement, because I was no longer known as a freethinker and as a prophet harmful to the government. Those in power did not sue me for sedition of the people of Israel, and so the worst that could happen to me was and prickly accusation of a stylistic imperfection or an omission in the description of some detail, such as the sound of an ear flick or a color accent in a character's tunic.

Lying in a triclinium of hewn white stone, on cushions sewn with gold, I performed an impeccable heavy-handed Latin lines the first words of my poem: "My slave makes my sandals wax, but God my tongue," looked at the lines and scratched through them, to write it down even better. Then suddenly I saw the red haughty face of Caiaphas, the reigning high priest, his pudgy stature cloaked in robes that would not be out of place for some kings.

"Shut up, Jesus! Said Caiaphas. 'May your tongue wither!'

"Why? I asked.

"We know all about you, Jesus! Continued Caiaphas. 'You had unjustly enriched yourself with the help of a temple you invented yourself out of idleness, and you will be punished for it, but if you stop writing your poems in clean Latin we will think again and give you a chance, write prayers in your mother tongue.'

But time went on, the day of judgment was approaching, and lo and behold, then the sun rose in the west one morning, which was a very bad sign, but I did not stop and continued my work: I tested the letters for their weight and formed my words, I lay tossing and turning in my sphere, trying to put the heavy copper lines in the right order, and to find such a posture that might not be entirely comfortable, but at least would not hurt. Our world was going down and I saw that only two words remained so hard and piroek.

I woke up. My disciples were asleep. Beside me, Judas lay shuffling, undisturbed, like a child. The campfire smoldered after. A balmy wind sailed through the branches of the olive trees, the wings of the prophets rustled in the inner Milky Way, and I had such a dry mouth that I would not be able to utter a word before I drank a sip of water.

Sitting by the stream, I heard its dark stream murmuring on the stones and thought about whether there was no way to bring important words at once to all people, to the ends of the earth. Without pigeon mail, without horses and ice bids. You really couldn't do that in full using columns of smoke or the reflection of metal plates that Roman cohorts used to signal to each other from high places.

All that took too long. A scorpion shoots by, and you have already changed your judgment, this one has become useless and there is no point in communicating it to other mortals.

Did I need that, by the way? All the things that really mattered, I trusted only to those closest to me. The masses were beyond reason, even though I was constantly dealing with them....

Yes, I needed that. After all, you didn't have to love those people; what mattered was that you did your job. How many of your pre-parents had had time to provide themselves with offspring before they died, all just to have you brought into the world! So if you had something to say, say it, especially if it was eloquent and your words came straight from the heart.

And if you learned the composition of words? According to Epicurus, there existed only matter in the world, which was opposite the void, and that matter in turn consisted of innumerable atoms. So you had to split the words into atoms! Since atoms constituted all that existed, at my will, words could form anything from that, in any quantity and of any weight, whether in Sarmatia or in Memphis. What mattered was to decipher the secret code....

Yes, there was a key to everything in the universe.

If I didn't quit, if I overcame resistance and thought through, if illness didn't tear my life away, the scribes didn't finish me off with a death sentence, a fanatic didn't knife me, I would absolutely find that key one day....

Morning was approaching. Moths circled around in the moonlight. In all those days, especially after that little case in Jerusalem, I longed for feminine caresses, because danger always fueled my craving for women, as if someone were reminding me: hurry to love, you don't have eternal life (by the way, maybe that was "the voice of conscience" recently discovered by the Hellenic philosophers?). I returned to the campfire and lay down in my seat, imagining a lithe mulatto woman with green eyes embracing me, as beautiful as Hathor and as wise as a 200-year-old serpent, after all, a woman's intellect often set a man on fire more fiercely than the obvious merits of her body.

Sometimes I sometimes thought that God ... was an excitement, a sudden pull to unite the incompatible: the mouse and the snake, ugliness a delight, virtue and anger, the Roman equites and the poor zealots of Judea, water and silver. What primitive loneliness had controlled him that he had decided on all this?

God alone was eternal space when his mighty zajien raised, the letter cast of gold and inverted: T

What had the woman been from him? The darkness, of course. God had entered into the darkness, had united with her, had poured his pale seed of reason into her, and from that moment the catastrophe had begun, the contradictory life of everything.

Other letters appeared and words were created. As is well known, among different peoples they were prepared from different materials. I had no doubt that somewhere in the northeast there were people whose words were carved from heavy black ebony, and even further north the fur-clad people used ones that were carved in ice and could let light through.

But most of all the first words were a stone. In the still night, when the hoof-beats of horsemen do not sound up, the owl does not scratch, the mill wheel on the river does not turn and the campfire does not crack, lay your ear against the earth and you will hear the song in the language of stones that sounds from the day of creation. It was nothing like the song that a merry woman with a tympanum in her hand played and sang to you, no, it was reminiscent of the equally distant, victorious and disturbing call of the shofar there the archangel blew to call all the literate to the final battle.

I saw the letter that was the head of an ox, the fish letter and the eye letter that had to be put out. Letters of mercury, letters of bone, letters of dough. Two letters that were dog ears. I saw the lumbering words running one after another across the parched red earth, like a herd of elephants to the watering hole. I heard brilliant, worm-eaten speeches. I saw words emerging from the maternal darkness that had become a bevy of piteous slaves.

In Jaffa I had once witnessed how a British slave had had his tongue cut off as punishment for trying to flee, he had hidden on a Frankish merchant ship preparing to set sail, among the bales of merchandise, but had been caught and returned to his owner. The affair could have ended with a beating and a long sit on the chain, but the captured slave began cursing, insulting his owner, an ancient Roman. The graybeard took it calmly, because he did understand that the man was distraught, but the old man's young wife interfered, claiming that, given that the slave had publicly scolded, using very ugly words, it was imperative that he be punished in public, to prevent their family from being in harm's way.

The Briton was tied to a marble column in the harbor. A crowd gathered, with other slaves among them: Hellenes, Asians, Scythians, blacks, even Teutons, who stood out with long, shaggy beards. All watched with eager fear the punitive execution, a spectacle that, according to their owners, should benefit the slaves.

The executioner made the Brit open his mouth, grabbed his tongue with a sharp hook and made a quick almost imperceptible movement with his knife. Blood gushed from the slave's mouth and his tongue fell, like a red jellyfish, onto the stone pavement of the quay.

I felt sorry for the Briton, but in the book of Ezra it was said "it is better for man not to be born, better not to live, for the wordless creatures are happier than man," and who knows, maybe after losing his tongue this slave had finally found quiet happiness for himself.

Chapter 10 - The Samaritan

Soon we ended up in Samaria, in the city of Shira, where pious people had no business, but they did not frighten me. Yes, there lived Hebrews who had mixed their blood with that of Syrians and of the people of Mesopotamia, and our spiritual father strongly condemned it. But could you sometimes measure love for God by the purity of blood...? Besides, the opinion of the Scribes has always interested me only as that of collectors of wry human errors.

At that time we were penniless and yawn-hungry, while I could not earn anything by profiting, because the fire to do so, after the conversation with Shammai, had been temporarily extinguished in me. My students extorted some food from villagers along the road, an onion or unleavened bread, and it was a small celebration when Judas managed to steal a sheep, which we roasted in a hidden place and ate, sending prayers to heaven about its owner. Although, objectively, the sheep's owner was neither the shepherd nor the villager who had fattened it for slaughter, but God alone, if He existed, of course. While you could also designate some ram as owner and spouse.

I must humbly confess that "fire" is an overly glorious and thereby significant word to describe my ability to engage in conversation with people, cheer them up in the process, and also earn money for a dripping piece of meat and a burp of good wine. Therefore, it was better to put it this way: for a short time the smoking lamp within me was extinguished, whose soot irritated many the eyes and made breathing difficult, but in the light of that lamp the most unsightly and deeply hidden truths were brought to light.

During those weeks of hunger, I was reminded more than once of the days of abundance we had known in Capernaum, in the widow's great house, and I dreamed of returning there if at all possible. And we walked north, toward Capernaum, slowly and cautiously, stopping often. We hid from mounted patrols and from the rich chariots of Hebrew highmen. That spring, along the roads, heralds of all kinds of freedom were often rounded up, and there was even one person sentenced to death.

And it suddenly puzzled me: what had people invented writing and the wheel for? The art of healing? To what purpose did they soften the conditions under which they held slaves? After all, despite this triumph of reason, the thread of life of any man could be broken at any moment, who could have become a poet of all times or a merciful wise king, who had changed the world for the better, or become neither one nor the other, but no less valuable to the one who truly loved him, a dog if need be, or a woman.

The night before, Simon had gone after Sihzra alone, to find out if we were in no danger there, while we waited for him at a nearby shelter. He had been chosen for this mission because his facie least resembled that of a Hebrew or Gaul, and we hoped that his sight would not anger the Samaritans.

Simon returned and informed that the inhabitants of Shizra were gloomy and distrustful (as to be expected) and it would not be easy to get a nutritious dish and nightly lodging there but there was a chance: he had met a Samaritan, with whose help such could be easily accomplished....

As chance would have it, Simon had been alone with this woman at the well at the foot of the mountain and no one had seen him. He had said something nice to her, she had trusted him and tearfully told him that her husband mocked her every day, the local miller, who suspected his wife of infidelity, where there was none. This would happen towards evening, when he would pour himself full of sweet wine. Her foolish husband had almost convinced the whole town of it, and it looked serious that she might be punished by the legal judgment of the elders. She had no way out, and she begged Simon to help her, because she rightly saw in him a man who could.

Simon immediately understood what he had to do. In his large leather knapsack, crammed with everything and anything, he kept a supply of the very simplest of medicines, and one of them was a remedy that caused an extremely powerful belly run with fever and was used for poisonings, as a cleanser, a powder of senna leaves, klitz seeds and crocodile dung.

Simon gave her the drug in a dose large enough to keep a couple of grown men down for a time and told her to mix it for her husband through the jug of wine he drank every night.

The woman proved insightful enough and executed everything to perfection.

Drained by a sleepless night, by fever and colic, by morning the distrustful miller of Shira, lying on a straw mat in his garden, was ready to believe anything.

We arrived in town by noon and met our Samaritan in the square in front of the local baths at the appointed hour. She appeared small in stature, slender and lovely. In the presence of casual witnesses, I walked up to her and asked loudly and liltingly, as I usually spoke to the crowd, "How sad are you, woman? Is perhaps one of your loved ones dying?'

The Samaritan began to cry, plunged to the ground and wrapped her arms around my legs so truthfully that I was almost moved to tears myself.

"You are a great teacher! Shrieked she, and the townspeople took a peek over their fences, and passersby kept looking at us. 'You have looked into my heart, teacher! My husband is very sick. I fear he is dying, for I love him so, so very much!'

'Get up, my daughter, and take me to your husband.'

I replied affably.

We made our way to their house, followed by a small, noisy crowd.

It was a hot day, the sun was shining brightly, and the air was pregnant with the general anticipation of a miracle.

In the garden behind the house, next to the stinking cesspool, a powerless miller laughed under a peach tree, his face looked gray, and he was so exhausted that he was not even surprised when people filled his garden. He screamed in madness, showed his teeth and was horribly afraid, awaiting death. Of course the powder had worn off by now, but he did not know that, and he prayed softly, mixing words of psalms with curses and groans.

I sat down next to him. He looked at me obliquely, as if he saw a ghostly apparition. Simon said something to people and people shut up.

"My name is Jesus," I said, "Do you want me to heal you?

'Yes, Rabbi,' barked the miller plaintively, and he opened his eyes. 'Save me, sinner, I am dying.'

"And are you doing a good job?" I asked.

'Yes,' he said.

'But can you separate all the sand from the flour?' I looked at him, as if on doomsday. 'The sand your millstones left in the flour?

'No one can do that, rabbi,' replied the miller evasively, 'but that's not my fault, because all millstones wear out and make the sand,'

'And then how can you separate the truth from the lie!' I exclaimed, 'when the simple sand is not even in your power?' Your dear wife suffers from you, even though she has sinned against you in nothing, and that is recorded in the heavens!'

The people in the garden began to murmur, and the miller, who did not even have the strength to cry, brought out hoarsely: "I believe it! I believe it! And I will never doubt my wife again, if God is merciful in sending me healing.'

'By the evening of this day you will be healthy again.'

I said.

And so it happened.

All of Sihzra was at our feet. We spent three days in the miller's house and under the pleasant burden of his gifts we moved on.

Sometimes it can be helpful to give a woman back her honor. 'I praise you, Lord, that you did not create me as a woman,' is how many Jews pray at bedtime, and I think it's not a bad prayer....

We returned to Capernaum, but the rumors of my wickedness at the walls of the temple had rushed ahead of me, and that did not bode well. My purpose had not been achieved, because, with few exceptions, the people saw it as a crime that served no higher purpose. I also no longer had any desire to perform such feats of art, at the risk of being torn apart by the crowd, and I thought about becoming an ordinary doctor in Capernaum, the quiet green city I found so attractive.

Certainly, I did not know what to do with my students in such a case. By that time they were so used to doing any ordinary, monotonous work that without me they could perish from boredom, hunger and desire.

Thanks to the teachings of the Syrian doctor Aprim, I was able to help people as a physician, but what were they to do? The situation of my students was aggravated by the fact that each of them, to a greater or lesser extent, did indeed see the Messiah in me and did not want to abandon his teacher, the man who was able to bring them within God's landmarks.

The first thing I did in Capernaum, after showing my students around the marketplace. (magicians could always make a little extra money in the large crowd), was that I walked to the house of the kind-hearted widow, but unfortunately she was not there, she was still living with her parents, while the house was occupied by a Chajaten family, emigrants from the Kingdom of Armenia, whose head, a handsome greasy-haired merchant, had somehow convinced the widow that he was as distant as he was a beloved relative of hers. As was to be expected, the Chajats chased me away relatively roughly, and with all manner of mockery. No wonder too, for such a home in one of the most beautiful cities in the world, it was indeed worth leaving Armenia.

I shouldn't have left that house at the time, afraid of being worn down for epicurean, because it didn't matter what some sourpusses thought of me....

April I could not find, he had left the small stone shack on the grounds of the slaughterhouse where he had lived, and had left town, having been accused by relatives of the local head of customs of failing to save his life.

This official had had a heart ailment, and Aprim had recommended that he not drink wine, but more importantly, retire, having handed over his directorial care to someone else. But the official had stubbornly insisted on a miracle cure, had gotten done that Aprim gave him an oily sage drink to rub his chest with, and had died one morning.

I stuck my light out to a few more people in town who had eagerly listened to my preaching. I was given food and some money, but no one suggested I stay in his home.

At long last we were helped by a well-known fisherman who offered one of the sheds on the shore, in which fish were dried, as shelter.

We washed in the lake, cooked and ate fish soup (the fisherman's wife had temporarily lent us a large kettle) and stayed to chat by the campfire when it got dark. Up on the hill shone the sparse yellow lights of the town. From there a black dog came running, I petted him, gave him the remains of the fish soup, and he stayed with us. Behind each of us danced a living, quick and absolutely realistic shadow, and it was as if there were not six of us, but 13, because at a certain angle the shadow of the burly dog was indistinguishable from the shadow of a freedom-loving Jew.

Chapter 11 - The Ship

It was a mean cold night. I was on one of the snow and ice-covered peaks of Mount Hermon. The moon was absent, but the stars shone madly not only from above, but also from around me, as if the top of the mountain had detached itself from the mountain itself, had flown up and hung unimaginably high in the sky. I was wearing a linen tunic, and a woolen robe, with a girdle, but these hardly helped to keep me warm, while my feet immediately began to freeze, tucked as they were in my old, worn sandals, and a great chill therefore drew up from the ground on which I stood. 'Good thing there's no wind,' I thought, looking around me.

The sky was a familiar, but seemingly shifted location, showing on the right a previously invisible group of constellations, whose names I did not know. Trying to understand how I had ended up here, I noticed that the stars above me were just slightly brighter than those below me, and suddenly I understood that all I saw around me was the reflection of stars, in pitch black water.

There was no bank to be seen, no light in the distance where water merged into the sky. But how had it come to pass that the entire mountain had been flooded solidly? Suspicion flashed, and I shuddered at the thought that I was witnessing another deluge. But how had I ended up on this mountaintop? Had Cherubim perhaps carried me to the top while sleeping? What would happen next? Where were my disciples? Would they have perished...? Sure, their school had some comfort in the fact that they had perished like all kings and great thinkers, but I found it especially sad for Judas, who was better than any of us. Only, if this was a flood, why did the water lie there motionless, like a smooth polished stone? After all, after the flood, everything would boil, there would be trees floating around, bodies of dead men and animals, and above that filthy universal hodgepodge would be God's voice: "The end of all creatures before Me has come, since the earth is filled with their evil deeds, and so I sweep them away from the face of the earth, I bring in a great deluge of water to destroy all flesh in which is the spirit of life under the heavens. So, if everything has come to rest, much time must have passed after the flood... But then why am I alive?

It was so quiet that I could only hear my own breathing. After a while, I noticed that the stars reflected in the water began to move a very small amount.

I couldn't do anything. Not jump into the water. What good was that when the whole earth was flooded? I was witnessing an event so menacing and irresistible that the thrill of its solemnity and inscrutability dispelled the specter of fear.

Among the ice floes on the mountaintop, I could only hold my ground on an uneven surface two paces large. In front of me and to my left, the solid ground sloped perpendicularly toward the water for a distance of up to 50 cubits. I wrapped myself more tightly in my clothes and waited graciously.

It was as if time had solidified, as had the water all around, while the sun only did not show itself because I could not think of it properly, could not imagine it in all its radiant fullness that the three Latin letters SOL instead of the familiar Jewish signs came to mind. I

wanted to decide what to do with them, how to strike the first spark from the letters. I felt it could be done, but it was also obvious that the process would take an incredible amount of time, while I had no desire to spend a few thousand years in this freezing darkness, a time when I would see nothing but the handwriting of comets in the black sky. I had to find another way to get warm.

After all, when the sun appeared, I understood, the day would promptly separate from the night, as said in the Torah, after which the springs of the abysses would be covered, the waters would recede, the creeping vermin and fish would appear, according to their nature, and all kinds of animals in the greenery would grow up according to their nature....

But I had no other letters, and over the abyss all around hung darkness as before.

Hard to tell how long I waited, but suddenly a yellow light appeared on the far left, which fifteen minutes later had changed into a group of lights, and soon I understood jubilantly that a ship was approaching, lit with a great crowd of lights, the ark itself, on which the 600-year-old patriarch had gathered a few more specimens of everything that lived, to preserve it, and now all he had to do was save me.

As the ship sailed closer, I was more and more struck by its enormous dimensions, much larger than all the largest measurements known from Scripture, and I concluded that one of the copyists of the Torah had made a mistake and had given an incorrect number of cells for length and height. It was a truly gigantic ship, many times larger than the dimensions of a multi-deck naval vessel, as I had once seen in the port of Alexandria. And it was of a different, perfect, streamlined shape. It was only unclear how it sailed, so without windows or sails.

As it approached, a soft buzzing sound swelled and it resembled the distant beat of the surf.

This ship was the epitome of life amidst the cold waters, it shone with hundreds of lights, while inside it was in all likelihood nice and warm, there always held all kinds of wild animals and birds, along with the large family of Noah, who could take me into his paternal arms at any moment.

When less than three stadia remained between the ship and my shabby island, I was suddenly seized by agitation. The ship sailed straight at me, and it was uncertain how I could get the beast to stop. I understood that Noah may not have seen the mountaintop, nor me thereon, because the Most High, preoccupied with other matters, had made no announcement to him of obstacles in his path.

Trembling with cold and fear, I prepared myself for the end, knowing that upon her collision with me, the ship might go down, and with it everything that lived. The ship approached faster and faster, and when its black pointed nose was very close, I dropped to my knees and wrapped my hands around my head.

There was a groan, and barely noticeable rocking of the mountain beneath me. A moment later I realized that I was alive and not drowning in the sea, and I opened my eyes. I was in my old place, but right in front of me seven Latin letters were speeding forward, from left to right:

CINATIT

Then I saw that some large pieces of ice had been repelled from the mountain and flew down with great clamor, into the interior of the ship, onto the incomprehensible kind of structure thereon. I understood that the ship had managed to make a turn and hit only the top of the mountain. In front of me a great crowd of small, round luminous windows flashed up, but I saw no animals, no people; I heard only a regular reverberation, as if someone were striking a brass plate. The shining ship sailed in front of me, like a ghostly apparition, and quickly moved away.

On its back dock, which hung high above the water, were also small round windows, whose lines were reflected in the dark waves.

Above the ship, clouds of smoke rose from tall round towers that contrasted screen against the sky.

'Noah! Noah! Lamma savachtani? Why didn't you pick me up here? Damn you! Best you could all just cremate!' Exclaimed me in despair, well understanding that it was useless to shout, and not understanding what was happening. Why had the top of the mountain rocked beneath me, but had not collapsed beneath me? Why had no one seen me?

I check the ship. It left me with only seven letters, joining the three that made up the Latin word "sun.

The ship sailed some 10 to 15 stadia away and then stopped, had turned, just like a brilliantly lit fortress from which, at a certain angle, smoke billowing up towers, there were four of them. The ship had sailed too far away, I couldn't see what was happening on it, but I did feel a joy at that moment, concluding that the wise Noah did think to return to the top of the lonely mountain in the middle of the sea, and see if there wasn't someone on it. But something like another hour passed, the ship was in place as before, and I noticed that it was listing and that most of its lights had been extinguished; then it went down even more, with its prow in the water and ... extinguished the last lights.

In confusion, I understood that the ship had been damaged by contact with the mountain and therefore had gone to the bottom with all the animals and people. I even heard the cries of despair that resounded from there, which together were reminiscent of the chirping of locusts....

A moment later the stars extinguished from above and below, and it was again as if the ice floe that domiciled me was in the air, but now I had a whole dozen Latin letters. After some thought before I came up with the word SCINTILLA, which flashed for a moment and then immediately fell apart again into its constituent parts.

I understood that the ship had sunk, that everyone was dead and nothing was left of it. The full heaviness of the world rested on me, the only witness to this catastrophe. Shivering with cold, I gathered all my courage and concluded that I would not perish because, after all, a new era was dawning and I was the one who would have to create everything anew. No one else would. The means to that end were few, but they sufficed: solitude, cold, the solid ground of ice, darkness and Latin letters.

Chapter 12 - The Aurelius

When I woke up, the sun was shining through the cracks of the barn and the wind was coming in. The bunches of fish hung on racks to dry made a rustling sound. During the night it had been cold, and someone had thoughtfully placed a wool coat over me, judas probably. I was alone and thought my students must have been scouring the city at dawn to make their move somewhere. I dozed a bit until I heard someone calling me.

I got up and walked out of the barn.

Some distance away, at the water's edge, surrounded by a modest and not very numerous retinue, stood Aurelius, the prefect of Capernaum. Without paying any attention to the delegation, I walked to the water, and sat on a large quay gazing into the distance, over the greenish-white waters of the Sea of Galilee, which always had such a color in the morning. I liked watching the rippling waves better than the prefect, because those waves were there in their place Baarn, whereas the Roman Aurelius had once come to Galilee for his work and did not regard those regions as his home. He also looked down on the locals from on high, not only because he was the official boss of the city, but also because he was proud of his blood. I had seen in the streets of Capernaum how he approached the people. Aurelius could pardon an old man or kick a working donkey, while he ordered guards to chase beggars and lepers out of town with stones, like dogs.

I love the word "galilea," there is music in it. If you uttered it somewhere in the desert of Egypt, among the growing hot reddish-brown rocks, you would immediately see a cool court rolling back to the lake, exposing all sorts of colors of wet pebbles. The shade of the palms, the greenery, the white roofs. I love the word hallelujah, the shortest and most eloquent prayer in the world: the word shadaim animated me, the combination of those sounds, the prancing body of a four Edomite with long, coal-black braids. When they ran out of complaints to flee from the rattling chariots and the horsemen of Pharaoh, all they had to do was utter such words or Joseph and his children found new hope, an east wind lit up and the lightning wrath of God scorched the Egyptians to ashes, like straw.

Aurelius had no message for Jewish lore, shit for the great and secret Jewish language, which became the foundation upon which the inverted pyramid of the whole world rests, and he had no message for me either. He surely did not come to bring me good news, and surely not from equal to equal. Why then would I be pleased to meet him?

Stepping on the rocky bank each time, the prefect approached.

Indignant voices rang out: 'What a brat! He doesn't even get up.' 'A cheeky vagabond.' 'Definitely ate too many altruine apples...'

The mighty figure of the Prefect Aurelius in his wind-swept white gown came moving toward me like a snow Scottish. His sentiment surrounded me.

I looked at his fleshy face with the long nose, like a beak, and prepared myself for the fact that I would finally be sent to prison, remembered or thought of the pretext for that, and felt melancholy for the fact that the inhabitants of Capernaum had only so recently seen me as their doctor and best friend.

'Jesus, I won't waste my time coming all the way to you, I was just taking a walk along the lakeshore, just to get a breath of fresh air,' the prefect said.

'Glad to see you, good man,' I replied with a smile.

If I had to have a chat with an unpleasant person

I always smiled, and it looked sincere, because at that moment I was just imagining something funny, an old joke or something. Or that my conversational partner was a big kid who needed to be put at ease.

You could tell from Aurelius' face that he had had a merry night. He wasn't even completely sober yet.

'People worry, see you as a criminal',

he continued.

"What people? I asked him to specify.

'Avdon, for example, the rabbi of the synagogue,' said the perfect chuckling. 'All right, I must say that Avdon and his fears leave me cold, that whole religion of yours is laughable, but there is an order before me, from which it follows that I must imprison anyone who gathers crowds around him and surrender them to justice.'

'Then where do you see a crowd, Aurelius?' I asked. 'I'm sitting here alone.'

'You are sitting alone because your servants are foaming through town and one of them, by the name of Simon I believe, made an attempt to steal a chicken. He has since been punished for that. Did you come here with your goons to rob and steal? The prefect's eyes shot fire. 'That won't be smooth for you. If you want to stay in this town, you'll have to work. We can always use extra hands in the soap factory. Otherwise things will end badly.'

With that, the interview was over, and the prefect removed.

Soon Simon appeared on the bank next to our barn, limping, with a fat, busted nose, and I figured that Judas should have stolen that chicken, him going and things like that were better off. And was that actually theft, in the full sense of the word? I'm sure Simon would have tried to steal that chicken from a rich stinker, perhaps giving it a push toward his salvation. How could you save yourself if there was nothing that

bothered you? None of us had ever taken away the last thing anyone had, no one was after a beggar, or a child. On the contrary, if we had money, we helped everyone. And now, a poor chicken. Who if she had had sense in her head would have come to us voluntarily.

Chapter 13 - The Envoy

Capernaum's love for me had cooled, only a few local women sometimes helped, coming for advice and bringing food: eggs, vegetables, something else. One of them even wowed me on a cold night, thanks to the fact that her old husband was off to his family in Bethsaïd for a party. We still live in that barn by the lake, in the neighborhood with those dried fish,

which made you think that that shed on the shore of eternity was reminiscent of a storehouse for people singing in the afterlife, where, drenched with the salt of passion, they were suspended in long lines awaiting the voice of the trumpet. But if those fish did not wake up, surely we, caught in the nets of death, would not wake up either.

The prefect did not leave us alone any further, even though I did not ponder letting my little community peg itself off to a soap shop. That was repulsive work. The soap factory was located on a hill five stadia from the city, and from there the wind sometimes carried the stench of rotting meat. To boil the soap, thirds used animal strands. I understood that the prefect wanted to send us there, because he was upset about money from the sale of soap. Aurelius had put soap-making on a great footing and hatched some new recipes himself for the sea of Capernaum, by adding ambrosia, myrrh and juniper, you even had them in different colors: red ones with the juice of the Phoenician apple,

yellow with saffron, light blue...

The city was located on the main road and Aurelius received no small income from tolls, the tax collectors remitted denarii and didrachms to him, as well as local merchants and fishermen trying and appeasing him. Of course, he by no means deducted all of what he managed to bring in from the county's coffers. And what would we have gotten for the work at the soap sawmill, which could be equated to the work of the stonemasons and the cesspool men? A few copper assarii, just enough to buy cheap wine in the evening.

People did come from other places (not just Galilee) to see me. I spoke to him, gave advice and treated him to the best of my ability, but requested somewhere in the city to spend the night, so as not to gather people around me and thereby incur the wrath of Aurelius.

I did my best not to antagonize the government, remembering what good fortune I had had that Valerius Gratus' letter had not reached His destination. Had it done so, and the Romans had been able to hold such self things throughout the province, the loose-knit brotherhood of Jewish prophets and chant healers would have been destroyed.

My call did not silence in Lidda, not in Jericho, unlike those of hundreds of other prophets who rose for a year, or but a spring, only to dissolve into invincible life. One made a fortune, bought a profitable orchard in the Jordan valley and became a happy, workaholic villager; another died, torn apart by the furious mob that had been stirred up by the clergy. And a third lost his mind and degenerated into an ordinary filthy beggar or worked as a jester at funerals of Romans, putting on the death mask and entertaining the guests, as well as with variety at weddings, writing insipid verses and performing them publicly.

One time a young man came up to me. That he was not a Jew, I could see travel from afar by his beard. Or rather, he arrived on an expensive thoroughbred, fastened it to a tree on the hill and descended along the steep path to our barn. He asked politely and appreciatively, in Aramaic, which of us was Jesus, then bowed to me and said, "My name is Amiminan, I have been requested to present to you, teacher Jesus, a letter and gift from Oroza Bakoerat, the supreme astrologer of Abgar Oechomo, King of Osroene.

I did not immediately believe that I was worthy of this visit from a foreign envoy of a royal star diviner. I thought that the man was making fun of me or had been sent by Aurelius to provoke me so that the prefect could accuse me of one thing or another, of treason, for example, and put me in a cellar jail awaiting my trial. Those Romans always found a cause. Allegedly, someone had been accused of desecration of majesty for the bare fact that he had spanked his slave when the slave carried a silver coin with the image of Tiberius. My students already wanted to chase the suspicious guest away, Andreas in particular insisted, but after my conversation with the envoy (who patiently and precisely answered all my questions) I understood that he was not lying.

He was in his early 20s, ruddy and anything but handsome, dry clothes as simple as solid, apparently to reduce the risk of becoming prey to robbers in the extinct places through which he had come to me. He said he had looked for me in Jerusalem and in the Beth San before coming here.

Attached to the envoy's belt was a scimitar in a skull of sandalwood, he was broad-shouldered and by the looks of it, extremely strong. Added to his simple clothing, none of this made him an easy prey for highwaymen. While the fact that he was alone did not arouse the suspicion of the authorities of the regions through which his path had led.

He handed me the gift of his king, a gold signet ring with the head of a snake, of which the eyes bore two transparent stones of unusual purity and brilliance, and that convinced me definitively that he was not yet. I was astonished! I understood that it was still too early to end the life I was leading and become an ordinary quiet whole master, a warrior against gout and blisters.

I put the ring on the middle finger of my left hand.

Then Amminan rolled open a papyrus scroll and was before me the letter: I, Oroza Bakeorat, chief astrologer of the king of Orsoene, to Jesus of Nazareth, physician, residing in the land of Jerusalem. Wonderful here! I have heard of you and your healings, performed with the help of physicians and herbs, as well as with the help of words. I inform you that I have seen in the course of the stars the fate of man whose life continues after his death and will be like a great tree with hundreds of branches, like snakes, and one branch will bite the other, and one will not understand what the other does. I think I know who is the root of this tree: you. I am happy to have had the honor of informing you of this. It is said that you came to the temple on your greatest feast day and had fearlessly exposed your clergy there and even pulled the highest clergyman's beard. Our good King Abgar has had dealings with the honorless powerful of your clergy, they sent people to us to set us up against our neighbors, the Parthians, and I say that you have acted correctly. In time you will be the man who will bring glory to his people, from all my heart I wish you that. Pray for me, godly Jesus of Nazareth. Be careful, for I heard that the Hebrews murmur against thee and plot evil things against thee.  I humbly ask you, no this signet ring as a gift to you, so that you may think of me from time to time.

My students, upon viewing the signet ring, expressed their joy and amazement at the loudest, while I thought that perhaps Oroza Bakarut had written all that in a fit of drunken carelessness, for after all, what did a star diviner of the king have to do with a poor Jewish healer...? But how quickly the rumor of my visit to Jerusalem had spread! By the way, rumors are a force with the help of which you come to find the way to fame as well as to the grave. But what tree was he talking about? I still don't understand that now. Dick Wells Bert the woolly language of astrologers understood only by themselves.

"Does the astrologer have children? Add me as the envoy.

'Yes, three sons and two daughters,' he replied.

The envoy had writing implements with him. He took them out, dissolved ink from soot and serum, and wrote with a drive with slant cut. My answer on a sheet of parchment: I thank you for your precious gift, wise and clairvoyant Oroza Bakoerat. For you have turned from your business and from the path of the eternal stars to send me this letter and this signet ring. Be a blessed, learned man, who even without having seen me believes in my art. For it is written by the prophets that those who see me will not believe in me, and those who do not see me will believe and be saved, to become partakers of eternal life and the joy of God's palaces. Do not believe everything that is said, I have not pulled that supreme cleric by the beard, Otherwise you would not have read this letter, for wise astrologers do not send their icons to the third world to await their return. And as for the request to pray for you, I will do so every day with great iron, and you will understand that our Jewish God does not only abound from his own, but from those for whom holy prayers drink up to him. May your days be many and how sincere friends, peace be Osroena, and you and your five children.

I saw from the envoy's face that my answer pleased him.

I still had a little kid left, stopped the pipe and treated him.

After salvaging his scroll with my answer in a bag attached to his saddle, Amminan accepted the return trip.

After leading him out, I looked at the signet ring for a long time, and it was as if the snake was going to talk to me at any moment.

Chapter 14 - About goats

On one occasion I was walking alone in northern Galilee along a mountainside covered with pines and exuberant, in some places even impenetrable shrubbery. When I had walked around yet another stone bed I saw a man having intercourse with a goat. He didn't see me, because he was completely absorbed in the narrow animal pen, my sandals noiselessly suffered government red needle carpet and I hid behind a boulder to watch the event. I did understand that it was a shepherd from the nearby spot of the Hellenic community, where I had settled with my disciples for a few days the night before (the Hellenes were inclined to embrace my ideas passionately, but my attitude toward and was one of suspicion, they were in a bad odor, while kissing your hand a Hellenic could steal the money from your belt).

The shepherd held the goat by the horns, kept her head bent toward the ground, and did what he had to do. The other goats roamed the surrounding dog, picking the grass from between the stones in spring deftly over the stones, without paying any attention to their shepherd's erotic amusement.

In my youth, I had heard a wanderer say that at Herculanum you had an unusual statue of white stone, the spirit of fertility and midday slumber horse with a goat, looking her in the eyes. I thought a lot about that, and what could be seen in the crystal eyes of a goat, and I came to the conclusion that in it had to be seen this self of the universe: the endless indifference and the coldness of madness, or that maybe that fear in contrast come to seem only the reflection Bas of one's own feelings. Probably that was also exactly the way God looked at our frenzied world.

What I saw next was a slightly different scene (the Helleen had lined up behind the goat), at least if that tramp had not lied and that image that really graced the villa of a sprightly man in Herculanum.

I have nothing against such use of goats, if they are free and healthy, after all, from a Christian point of view it is more useful than intercourse with a woman: a goat makes no appointment to control the man's internet and make him her dumb servant. Some members in Israel (and not only there) were not averse to making a donkey the vessel of their passion, but goats, to my taste, were refined and much and much more suitable for that purpose, in accordance, I dare say, with a higher plan. Nor was there any reason to compare in detail the body of a woman and a goat; that was useless, for with the preacher it is already written that "man is not above cattle, because everything is vanity.

I just didn't use goats because it didn't attract me, preferring Galileans by character and mulattos

by skin color.

It is astonishing that this seen by me and further mocked the great Athenian orator Demosthenes, who set forth the common standards for a full life as follows: 'For pleasure we have the courtesan; the by-sleep for daily togetherness; we have wives on that they bear us thirtysomething children in being the faithful guardians of our domestic affairs.' This self-admitted sentiment undercut the illiterate have by stating that he received the desire without paying a courtesan, without worrying about the fate of his by lettuce, and without getting himself a lawful wife.

Of course, such love is known as a shortcoming, which, however, I count as a merit: a goat cannot have earthly children by a human being.

Our feelings are unmade, and to rely on your knowledge of the world only blindly on your ears your eyes and your nose is as naive as trying to determine the beauty and dimensions of the temple of Jerusalem on the bag, something also agreed upon by many Athenian teachers, even as they find their own examples of the unfathomable. It is undoubtedly true that in the world of every goat lover's ideas there is a child born with goat's legs and human torso. That creature jumps and waits, contemplates the world, and when the time comes, rapes its own nymphs who half-heartedly oppose it, thereby further inflaming its fire. What really matters is that this one becomes happier, when on the precincts of the invisible world, where Hekate picks her poisonous herbs at night for her cauldron, and Melinoe oversees the fresh, unquenched dead, would be whiny and curious as little children, for whom a new world has revealed itself.

I thought about that as I watched Hellene, whose movements became faster and faster. Finally he groaned and stopped. The goat worked her way out from under him and ran to her friends.

Our rabbis hated divorces and the unmarried state, but in the process forgot that a woman is more bitter than death, because she herself is a match, her heart is a trap, and her hands are shackles. What to do? Increase the number of goats in the entire population! If a man did not want to marry and have a child, the rabbis said that he had violated the commandment that commands us to multiply, and that he violated the face of God by killing his offspring. No! By taking advantage of goats, man left happy immortal creatures of himself, whose tracks could be seen early in the morning, in a quiet valley, somewhere in the sand near a spring.

How unjust that a Jew could forgo marriage for only one reason, to devote all his time to the study of the law, whose letters had long since been eaten away by mice!

A goat has something you will never fully find in a woman and what strongly attracts a man, and that is, naturalness. A goat does not wear clothes and your legs, she is simple, like the nature of passion itself. The prophet Jeremiah was already lecturing the coquettish, rouge-trimmed Jewesses: 'in vain shalt thou make thy cleaning and adorn thyself with chains of gold, in vain shalt thou make thy eyes coal-black: thy beloved shall despise thee'. The prophet is not listened to, Jewesses have been making their eyes coal-black for hundreds of years to one, and so their lovers take a cue from the Hellenes, they go out into the field to seek satisfaction on the slope of a mountain among the mewling cattle.

Chapter 15 - The synagogue

Prefect Aurelius had forbidden me from profiting in the streets and thus making people congregate, but I come to the synagogue of Capernaum and talk to the people there and ignore the displeasure of the rabbi. I loved that little synagogue in the grove on the mountain, next to the oil press. Unlike the gray basalt city buildings Bas Heij built of white stone, with 12 wide, rectangular windows, after the number of the tribes of Israel, with marble columns at the entrance, whose mason had decorated the roof with eternally ripe bunches of grapes. A separate aqueduct ran to what my head must learn, but I did not miss an opportunity to look up an explanation, or an addition to the texts. In the synagogue of Capernaum, I discovered scrolls with an unusual variation on the revelations of Baruch, and from time to time I went by to read a little in this testimony from Babylonian times, according to which the Jewish people, as always, were themselves to blame for everything.

The wretched work of Baruch Bas so much against the will of Judea King Joachim that, as his reading progressed, he repeatedly cut off pieces of the scroll with a knife and threw them into the fire, but I drew from this prophecy a subversive power that was necessary for your bubble eloquence when dealing with crowds of people. Moreover, the scroll I got my hands on gave a more detailed description than was usually the case of the seawater drinking the dragon in whose interior was hell, though such creatures had always held my great interest.

One good Sabbath morning I came to the synagogue without pupils when the old Rabbi Avdon had assembled quite a number of people there to discuss Torah, and matters of the city. In the prayer hall, where in the sunlight fell in like a broad self through the round going above the door, which also symbolized the light of the Lord God, the venerable elders of Capernaum were seated, scattered over the pews, with their long beards, and men and boys, among whom I discerned a young, blond Roman in a toga, trimmed with a purple trim, he was listening intently to Avdon. Seated before his people, the rabbi was explaining a prayer.

In a south-facing alcove sat a pair of women dressed in long plebes.

I was surprised to see a Roman among the Jews, though the old rabbi looked at me contemptuously. He could not expel me from the synagogue just as he could not forbid me to pray to God outside its walls.

I sat down between everyone and pretended to be all ears for what Avdon was proclaiming. In my hand I clutched a shell with a broken edge that I had picked up at the water's edge the night before. I waited for a fitting moment to reinforce my reputation as a teacher. I no longer thought of the quiet life I might lead, spittin' in the vegetable garden or riding simple doctors' rows, but once again wanted to change to the best of my ability our spiritual world that seemed to me by the day more like a jug of rancid oil, like half-witted scribes, tainted with superstitions and phobias, touting them for the cure for all ills. Of him David said, "there is no truth in their mouth, their heart is a curse, their throat an open grave, their tongue a tool for flattery.

Avdon ended his explanation of the salmon and began talking about how you should uphold the Roman government, not be rebellious, think more about saving your soul and criticize the new laws less.

'Do you not forget that all that is dark will become bright,' Avdon orated. 'Just now came the news that a conspiracy has been discovered against the great Emperor Tiberius, whose reign brings us so much prosperity. The cunning Lucius Aelius Seianus made an attempt on his power and has been punished! Entirely justified! Remember well: every government is God-given, nothing happens by accident. After all, even King Herod had a temple built at Caesarea for the Emperor August.

'I regret that, Avdon,' I said, rising from my seat. 'It is not a matter of building a temple for someone just because he is clothed with power.'

Approving retorts sounded from city officials.

That gave me a must.

'I just Rob everyone to look beyond their nose,' Avdon began to justify himself, and his face was red with effort. 'I'm talking about the fact that the most important thing for us is to keep our lineage and our faith and not fight against those whom we cannot possibly overcome. Our foreland is a prayer in silence...'

"No, Avdon! Exclaimed me. 'So timid as the prophet Isaiah just now, who said, pull out of Babylon, swiftly away from the Chaldeans with a voice of joy...!'

"Where do you suggest we flee to, Jesus? Avdon asked in a raised voice. 'You come out of nowhere to put us here, but with pious people living on our own soil, and these are not the times of Babylonian captivity now.'

"But what if Jesus is right and gives us God's punishment power through inaction? Asked a man in an expensive robe worriedly, apparently a merchant passing through, because I had not seen him in Capernaum before.

'It ends badly with people like Jesus!' Exclaimed Avdon. 'They hang from poles along the roads, only the ravens for joy. His friend Simon stole a chicken! Do you know that?

'Simon has already been punished for being hungry,' I said, seeing the young Roman take my interest and awe. 'Let us be meek toward Simon. And now let's talk about the main thing...'

In that moment, I try to put myself in a state

thereby the necessary signs pronounced themselves, as if they came flying towards the listener, born somewhere at the end of a sunny gallery as poetry.

'So,' I began slowly and menacingly, 'you drench God with vinegar and bile? With your unreason and wantonness?

The faces of the audience darkened. Avdon looked at me again obliquely, with a look full of hatred, picking at a tangled gray beard, but he did not interrupt me. As I lashed out at all that own us all, I talk first slowly, then faster, even faster, and at the end of this speech I shouted, shaking my fists, in one whose sharp shell was clenched:

'Brothers of mine! The secrets of truth are revealed in symbols and images, but we must look for these signs ourselves! Only ourselves! Have no hope in the synagogue, have no hope in the emperor, no hope in God! Yes, you hear well!

The audience stiffened, and the boy Romijn looked at me in ecstasy, as if he saw an omen.

'This world is one far pregnant with corpses!' Scheelde said, and tears streamed down my cheeks. 'Are you guys hearing?

We have no one, our mothers and fathers, which is dust, our rulers, which is mold, our property is musty and rotten, so what do we have to fear?

'Yes, Jesus! Truly it is so! Sounded voices. 'May fear be cursed! We are not afraid!'

'Darkness and lies, right and left, life and death,' I continued, feeling how the air in the prayer room vibrated from the energy coalesced in it, 'all that is one! God is the swallowing up of people! But I am here, with you, with you! I will share everything with you! Give me a bowl!

Someone gave me a black earthenware bowl. I quickly passed the sharp edge of the shell over my wrist, as I had once done at the wedding in Canada, Hilde bowl under the stream of blood and spoke slowly, in hallowed silence: 'I sit here before you, another teacher you shall not have, and I drink you with the living fluid for eternal life.... Take each from this bowl...'

The women began to wail. Avdon remained silent in his cut weather-decorated seat and looked at me wrathfully. One man with a puzzled face stood up and walked out of the prayer room, grinning, but all the others sipped the blood reverently. I stood before them and prophesied, forgetting that the blood kept flowing from my arm and forming a puddle on the stone floor. I lost consciousness.

Chapter 16 - Quintus Lanius

I woke up on a reed mat in the barn. The young Roman I had seen in the synagogue bent over me.

'Glory be to your God, Jesus,' he said. 'My name is Quintus Lanius. I'm so glad you're alive! You had lost a lot of blood. The whole city is talking about you only now. You are a true teacher, your preaching is a healing balm!'

Quintus told me that I had been unconscious for about an hour. The benevolent youth had torn a row off his gown and bandaged my mouth. After which he and a few others in the synagogue had carried me to the barn.

From outside sounded the voices of my disciples, they were preparing food, then Judas stepped in and also rejoiced at my return to the transient world.

I felt as limp as a dishcloth. Quintus walked away, soon returned with honey and a comb of warm goat milk, and I allowed myself to savour this treat. Seated next to me, Quintus told me that he was the scion of a distinguished lineage, raised into a spoiled and profligate young man who divided all his time to mindless idleness: he played dice, drank himself a piece in the collar, indulged in maidens and boy slaves, indulged in narratively hollow words, and on top of that he dyed and curled his hair. But a year ago, after being caught in a criminal relationship with the wife of consul Aulu Plautius, he had been exiled from Rome and gone on a journey, to see the world, to study the philosophy and religious teachings of foreign nations. This exile had revived his mind. He had arrived in Capernaum from Bosra and, out of curiosity, had entered the synagogue, hoping to learn something new there.

He asked about my signet ring. I explained that it was a gift from Oroza Bakoerat, and fussed that you had no use for such a ring if you were hungry, but that it was also a waste to sell it and therefore it would have been better if that star diviner had sent me gold coins. That made Quintus feminine. He could not believe that someone to whom the king's chief astrologer had sent a gift and a kind word lived in a drafty barn with the wind blowing right through it.

I even had to ask Matthew, who was just nearby for a moment, to take the letter out of his knapsack and showed it to the youth.

I talk with quint once until evening, sometimes falling asleep for a while, and then waiting patiently for me to open my eyes again. We talked Latin with each other. I explained to Quintus that travel was not the best way to get to know the world, that a philosopher of all first had to investigate his own inner world and already thus could cast himself out to become a great sage without coming out of his god, just as the Essenes and pheropeutes and other hermits chastise themselves slowly, to exhaust the flesh, nourish the aversion to their own flesh, and ideally you should put yourself to death quickly and painlessly. After all, there is no greater shame, my dear young man, than to be here and in this body. Have you ever watched the Jerusalem clergy in the temple prepare the livestock for the great feast day? Have you not? It is worth watching: the animals are led in goose march to the slaughter bench. And look, the condition of men is nothing better than theirs. The wisest thing a body can do on the way to the slaughterhouse is to cremate. Because our sacrifices will always be too little to God, always! Besides, I am convinced that you can only partake of true happiness and bliss on the healing side, among the magnificent immortal beings. Believe me, virtue goes astray for mortal nature, but meets the immortal full of joy.

Quintus was perplexed.

'But Julie Jewish god is against suicide.' Said he.

'Nowhere in the Torah is that said in so many words,' I replied. 'Indeed, God himself will once become flesh, as a man, and kill himself, thus setting an example for all sensible people. Then He will rise from the dead and transform the world. For that He only needs enough letters, enough to compose with them the one nodding and important thing that He will lay as the cornerstone of everything.'

My words sounded convincing, especially since Quintus had just seen how blood loss had nearly killed me to show people the way to eternity, the only worthwhile one.

'But I'm afraid to die, Jesus...' confessed Quintus. 'Later perhaps, when I am old and tired of my days...'

'When you are older, Quintus, your life will surely not be as valuable as it is now,' I continue my thoughts, stern, disconsolate and unquestioning. 'You will slack off spiritually and cling to life with your last strength, begging mercy to your shame from him who is not even worthy of your derision. You will be too late in the spiritual world... Animals should not have any defects, though old age is an ailment worse than ugliness. You know how the surrender in the temple in Jerusalem works? One wondrous morning your blood stains the walls and then your bowels and your fat hisses on the altar of odor that has been stoked all night... Best of all, there is a lamp. An old passage is not pleasing to God. Empedocles of Akragas, the Hellenic sage and physician, stepped into the crater of the volcano Etna without waiting for his old age, and he did very wisely in doing so.'

Quintus sank into pondering, then spoke, "You Jews are lucky, you have only one God whom you spit right in the bard for the whole mors art by virtue of the mors voluntaria. But my family believes in Neptune, Apollo, Mars, Pluto, in the geniuses and graces, and in Venus... It's a lot easier to kill a big gawd with a stone, than to miss a swarm. But I think it would be correct to determine who exactly owns all those birds.'

I was surprised at the accuracy of his words.

I laughed for a few days in the barn to regain my strength. I was told that Rabbi Avdon had again gone to complain to Prefect Aurelius, but that the latter had laughed at him for his inability to restore order in his own synagogue. My disciples, who were making money in various ways while prophesying as joyfully as they were unconcerned, were getting further and further away from Capernaum, because no one in the city and more believed. It took a long time for them to show up again. Only Judas was constantly with me.

Quintus regularly brought me good food and good wine, from which I gained great strength. Especially from the hearty fears of a three -year- old. Sometimes Quintus would come and lie next to me and I would slap my arm around him, like a girl.

Judas became jealous.

A short time later, Quintus said goodbye to Capernaum and continued his journey south to the Kingdom of Nabatia, because he wanted to visit Petra, the city where the tomb of the patriarch Aaron was located. What did you come to see there? Aaron had long since been freed from all of us, and his bones had turned to dust. As I said goodbye to Quintus, I hoped that my admonition would be effective. I chose the best medicine for him. In Petra you had a red rock from which you could step right into eternity.

Chapter 17 - The legionnaires

In Capernaum, a detachment of Roman legionnaires with whom I wanted to find a common language to talk about God were laughing. They did not have to wage war against anyone there, the local Jews did not revolt that year and most of the time the legionnaires, under the supervision of their centurion, performed work for the beautification of the city, as masons, carpenters and earthworkers. In addition, they kept a lot on the grounds around the encampment and grew vegetables to support themselves. From time to time they accompanied traders' caravans to neighboring towns, to protect them; traders paid handsomely for, afraid as they were of highwaymen. The legionnaires were eager for such trips, just to get away: they found the dull life in Capernaum boring. Sometimes they went hunting in the surrounding Hill Country, to outwit a fallow deer or wild boar.

As darkness fell, the clatter of the nail-studded military sandals of the steer simple men sounded outside. They slanted through the city, looking for cheap boy ben and amusement, which worried the wives parents of the girls there those legionnaires were so persistently after. And therein no brothels in Capernaum, and the legionnaires saw that as a punishment.

With their imperial salary of one thousand sesterces a year, plus the additional payment for work for the residents of Capernaum, many of them did not know where to put their money. Buying a house, or belongings, made no sense, since their unit could be transferred to another province at any time, and beyond that, they really couldn't spend money on anything.

Philippus then said he did want to open a lupinarium in Capernaum and buy black slave girls in Africa for that purpose and bleachers in Dacia, both renowned for their skills, but there were two things that prevented us from doing so: the rumor about it come all over Israel and detract from my reputation as a teacher; and, that above all, beautiful, healthy slave girls cost a fortune, taking into account the transportation costs from the nearest large port city to Capernaum, as well as maintenance until the time we would be out of expenses. Moreover, we had no place for it. And then we would have to pay regular assessments to the prefect and soap maker, who would not leave other people's profitable business untouched.

I also don't come too often blind to a public bloodletting because, despite the rigor of my philosophy, I wanted to keep living. In other words, you could not constantly turn your blood into daily bread, because a person's supplies of blood were limited, not even so much by the properties of the body, as those of the mind.

People still came to me from everywhere, for good advice and comfort, but almost all of them were street poor. As a result, in moments of sadness, Oroza Bakurat's letter struck me as a wry joke, and sometimes I even removed the signet ring with the snake from my finger and held it in my hand to feel its weight of gold. Some well-to-do Jews visited me out of curiosity, so my eloquence did not manage to overcome their suspicion and open a purse for me. The man in the fish barn already fell short of the image they had of the Messiah.

At times it became unbearably dull in the lakeside barn, where, before the eye of the very highest, we had evidently taken the place of dried fish for the time being. I could sell my signet ring, but something prevented me from doing so, and so the snake head twinkled through on my finger. Although my disciples did not complain, Matthew even disposed that the malnourished, even saw a beneficial asceticism in that, and even for a long time hard at that, which we all found amusing, but Simon remarked spitefully that Matthew would soon become such a holy tree that he would not eat lecanora and bake unleavened bread drying up man's poop instead of crumbs, as our patriarch Ezekiel had done.

By this time, I had explained to my students Alan that one had to commune with God by affirming His reality, not that of prayers devised by poor human beings.

One afternoon, as we sat with a few legionnaires in the shade of a laurel tree near the encampment, I told him of divine nature and of the happiness of dealing with him directly. But the legionnaires did not understand. I talked to him about the vanity of earthly life; they laughed at me. I gently tried to convince the legionaries that Roma was just another leviathan in the ocean of existence, they did not understand and became angry.

Finally, I smeared up a pipe I got from Shammai, stuffed it with a knife, lit the fire in it and let the pipe go around.

The intoxication from the smoke of the gunpowder made a crushing impression on the legionnaires, such as all the trainers of the world put together could not have accomplished, if they had come up with the idea of vying with the Roman army in eloquence. The legionnaires were so happy like children, as if a burden of lead had fallen from their shoulders. They laughed at my jokes, they suddenly began to ask questions about faith, even though until then they had only chuckled as they listened to me. The effect of comforting and reconciling Libyan herbs suddenly bestowed on them the ability to wonder about everything in the world and took the thick layer of tarnish away from their steered hearts. Looking at the legionnaires like that, I had even regretted that I was not as simple as they were: even through the smoke of the kif, even through the spirit of the wine, and even deep in sleep, unfortunately, I always felt the heavy gaze of reality on me, as of the deal that watches the victim enjoy his last momentary desire, which is also the best thing in our brief lives.

One of the legionaries, named Gaius, broke a few branches of the laurel tree there they were under, flew a crown from them and put it on my head. 'Jesus, you are the king of the herb,' he said, and everyone burst into laughter.

They smoked some more, and I told the legionaries of the green dragon, covered with emerald scales, into service scheduled sinners ended up. The legionaries listened with open mouths as the dragon hid in the soggy bowels of the earth, but that he needed to flick his tail and whole cities collapsed.

'To which god is this dragon subject? To Pluto? Or maybe to Aesculapius, because you can see a dragon as a big snake? Asked Gaius.

'no, dear Warrior,' I replied. 'This thread is never subject to any one, because he is the main God. And you can only kill like an untamed wild animal. Kill that beast! Kill Julie! And after that you may decide for yourself what is sin and what is not.'

The legionnaires shook their heads dancing under the effect of my words and that of the beneficial smoke.

Gaius much to me sometimes in reason and then ask me a far from stupid question....

I continued to tell them that the fabric of existence had become threadbare and that the end of everything was near, that the life of each of us was the measure of the universe ... and I saw how their eyes filled with pride in dignity.

They listened eagerly as they were told something new about themselves. All their lives they had seen only what they had been allowed to see. The dirt in senseless labor from a young age, and then, the blood, the subservience and the even more senseless war's company.

'If you believe in my powers, you can easily light a star in the sky and become that star yourselves,' I said to these warriors, who had suddenly turned into gentle children. 'With the help of your faith you can in a moment from day to perish in the night, as through a wall, you can be all things of the world in a true sense.' I looked at Gaius and added, 'you must not have read any books, Gaius, to your mind is as sharp as your sword. I tell you as it is knowledge is reason reason is more than the sum of knowledge. You are worthy of eternal light, just like everyone else here.'

And Gaius, this mighty ruddy legionnaire, scarred and almost burned black by the sun, suddenly came up to me and hugged me. He cried. This unflappable get had killed more than one enemy, felt human for the first time, not a nine doll in the power of unknown legates or tribunes.

Using rock in words, I could have substituted wine and women for these legionnaires for a while.

Every time I gave grown men a sense of the authenticity of life, even if I did not always do so honestly in the eye of the civilian man, I myself also felt the exaltation and began to see everything around me unbuilt, clear and deep. So too then, sitting under the laurel tree with the arms of a weeping legionnaire around me, I saw through the suddenly translucent earth, the glint of God's scales.

He was clearly worried.

Chapter 18 - About Commerce

The following day, one of the Capernaum legionnaires came to me. It was hot. I was sitting in the shade of the barn. Judas and Philip Martin were preparing a simple meal on the campfire. The other disciples were absent. I enjoyed the view of the base green hills on the southern shore of the lake. The flowing contours seemed like the promised land. There was no being there and no death, there you didn't have to pay taxes and think about where to get a handful of figs to satisfy your hunger. By the way, even on the other shore of the Sea of Galilee the earth gave oil and wine for 10 months of the year, but that didn't change anything.

'Jesus, we really enjoyed talking to you yesterday, come see us again,' said the legionnaire, and the sun shone on the carved emblems of his lepta. 'But don't you have some more of that kid for me that you regaled us with yesterday? I'm willing to pay you three lepta for a pinch of that drug, it's such a great help to get to sleep.'

I sold the legionnaire the entire modest supply of kif I had left.

The next day he came again.

At that moment I understood how I could share joy and peace with the legionnaires so that they would share with my money: resell their kif. To that end, cough cheaply purchased a bag of that herb from someone I knew, his name was Venedad, he traded in weaving fabrics and other wares. I had gotten to know him in Capernaum, when he had come to see merchant Italy, who had once taken care of my pupils. Vendad had treated us to excellent kif and gave a convincing discourse on its usefulness, stating that kif was unfortunate enough to be so little adopted by the Jews, even though it had a much better effect on body and mind than wine.

Venedad lived in Gegreza, a town on the other side of the lake. After consulting with Judas and Philippus, I decided to go there the morning of the next day. To this end, Judas had asked to borrow a boat from a fisherman. I had hopes of buying the kif from Venedad on the puff. By selling it in small portions to the empty nest, we could quickly and without exaggerating efforts improve our situation, namely by tapping into a legal source of income.

I had always had a soft spot for commerce, even though I had never specifically engaged in it. It occurred to me that the essence of commerce allowed one to escape the ancient curse with which God sent his children into the woods from Adam's time: 'So be the earth under a curse for thy sake; and with sorrow shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. It shall also bring forth thorns and thistles unto thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the field. You shall eat bread in the sweat of your face until you return to the earth, because you were taken from it.

Commerce freed a man from stupid, monotonous daily work. An enterprising man did not have to struggle against weeds. Sometimes I even thought that the bright and most just future all peoples would be marked by the fact that world peace would rest on the mere fair exchange of goods, services and coins, and no one would suffer subject matter beyond his power, except voluntary wage slaves, lunatics, a few stupid women and people who, of their own free will, inflicted such punishment on themselves, to clear their conscience. Indeed, it had a purifying meaning, for example, when a murderer, in the sweat of his face, dug a deep and spacious grave for his victims.

The important thing was not to confuse trade with piracy, as Herodotus of Halicarnas did, before he lost himself in writing historical works. Yes, in certain cases a writer was allowed, even required, to be an industrious robber and thief, but trade did not tolerate such digressions.Trade, reader! Relegate against tables, not forgetting that Christmas is worth more. If you have a boat and you sail to Tartes with a cargo of bell-smelling fabrics and spices, these not here and here a brave, well-equipped commando, for the sea knows no laws, as history knows no alternatives. What more should I say about it? If you can't pay taxes, for those then under no circumstances, because the government spends the public purse on a new war anyway, and then you can still be happy if it is not a war against your own people. This is why, by the way, a census is taken not only to determine the number of taxpayers, but also to find out how many enemies the government has.

What shall we beat about the bush, better to have a good heart and a chest of silver than just a big and good heart, a small child can still understand that! True to true, word to word, penny to penny, and don't be too lazy to thank him for a fulfilled and carefree life, this religion's name is Mercury the profitable.

Chapter 19 - The leper

We got up at dawn to sail to Gergesa. It was still chilly. Pink feather clouds passed over the Mountains and reflected in the lake's pale waters. From the town sounded the tapping of the small millstones with which the women ground the flour for the day.

I saw right past the farmhouse a man walking toward us, with a peculiar gait, with which he could hardly put one leg in front of the other. He approached and you could see that he was a young man who was leprous. Hair and fingers he no longer had, in his arms were reminiscent of tweedissel trees with a thickening at the end, lined with skin full of sores. His nakedness was covered by only a filthy cloth tied around his narrow hips.

The leper looked as if God had picked a different piece from his list each time, not to accept it as a sacrifice all at once. He seemed of noble birth, and all the stronger probably was his inner guidance, he had lost more than a jaded slave who thought about nothing.

'Jesus! I'm coming for you,' he lisped, with lips that were covered in scabs, and he sank to his knees before me, not so much out of reverence, but because of the lack of strength.

Matthew wanted to drive the leper away with a stick, to prevent him from infecting us, but I did not allow it.

The sun was rising over the lake, but the mountains of Gadara were still shrouded in shadows and only the rocks of their summits burned with a copper-colored fire. In the blue of the sky dissolved a barely visible moon that looked something like the well-groomed nails of a young farmer's finger.

I looked at the man, trying to understand where I differed from him, other than in the suffering that had happened to him.

'I was not allowed into the city, that's why I came to you along the waterfront, Jesus,' he explained. 'My name is Ephraim, I am from Dan Dalmanutha, hear my story.'

'I'm listening,' I replied.

'Jesus, I was a wealthy man, but you see, I have become leprous. My family has disowned me. My foolish wife has since found another man... But that doesn't matter now. Jesus, I'm dying, but only you, you hear, only you can save me. He looked straight at me. 'Even if you don't believe sufficiently in your own strength, Jesus, I believe for two.... I believe in it!

By that time I had seen a lot of distraught people come to me, clinging to life with their last strength, but this leper was a case in point. The amazing thing was that we both needed each other equally, because his belief in me was no less real and stronger than his terrible illness. The husk of God that was eating him was obediently trudging along behind him, as if on a leash. God could no longer do without this leper, and this leper could not do without me.

He told how he had undergone the usual cleansing ritual with a clergyman in Jerusalem, but neither the red wool thread, nor the hyssop, nor the curse of birds had helped. He had unsuccessfully sacrificed two small rams, and one small ewe, three-tenths of an ephah of wheat flour and a log of holy oliesel. The cleric had poured the fat of a small ram with its blood over his head....

I put my hand on his filthy bald head with the scaly skin, closed my eyes, heaved a deep sigh a few times, concentrated and saw the leper's soul, it was reminiscent of a roll of papyrus burning on one side with a light blue fire. With my willpower, I unfolded that scroll and tried to read it. Many words had been erased. Reading it in my mind, the fire stayed and extinguished, while I felt the leper's head shake under my hands. At that moment, the call of certain birds sounded on the waters of the lake and I noticed how this sound affected Ephraim's life text, some words changed. I kept peering at the scroll. Next to one of the lines was a red lump of Bas sculpted, mixed with vermilion, and I understand that had to be the date when fate had marked the beginning of his illness. The lines trembled, but I saw the inmates' listing of wedding appetizers that was broken off at the words "veal equally, and wine gin in medium jugs. Then the entire text changed to the two large letters that began the leper's name:

EF

I knew enough.

"Who abbreviated your name, Efraim? I asked.

'mother-in-law! My mother-in-law! Exclaimed him, and his face twisted. 'Yes! She always called me Ef, no matter how nasty I thought that was.'

'This wicked woman has taken away part of your name, Ephraim,' I explained to him, 'and God has taken away part of your body with the fire of leprosy, because too often he does not conform to people, carries out their wishes, copies their actions and accomplishes the things they say... I have put out that fire. Now, in conclusion, write your full name in the sand.'

With the stump of his right hand, Efraim slowly put his name in the sand.

'The leprosy is brought to a halt, but you will have to make peace with the fact that you will not get your fingers back,' I said.

'That doesn't matter, I still have my most important finger in place, the one between my legs,' Efraim replied, smiling predatorily. 'Not for nothing does my name mean ''the fruitful one''. Thank you, great Jesus...'

And from then on Efraim was so calm and self-assured that I really had no doubt that he would find a sweet woman without fail who would give him shelter and care for him.

It was both of our victory over leprosy, over God and over the inner fire. I think back to this man with joy, in whom I had seen so much faith that you could move a mountain with me.

Efraim helped me grow stronger, he truly believed in me, even if I was not yet worth the slightest part of his faith. But I do understand that the power once given to me, which was filled with him, would not necessarily serve my happiness, and that if I did not learn to deal with it, it could even destroy me completely.

Then I got into the fishing boat with the steep boards with my pupils, to sail to Gergesa. There was no wind, the self was of no use, so Judas and Philippus put themselves industriously at the oars, while I sat on the stern at the helm. When we were about half a stadie where we sailed away, I turned and saw Ephraim lying on the sand, protecting his name. The day burned loose, and began to bake, and he put a cloth on my head.

Chapter 20 - Gergesa

Venedad prepared us a hospitable reception. He had not been in Capernaum for a long time, believed that we were still going for the winter and enjoyed dealing with successful people, in his eyes they were the righteous, he believed the Sadducees, who said that God's grace fell to him who was successful in earthly matters. Whereas in our case it was the other way around: from time to time we were successful, but only because we presented ourselves as holy beasts.

Shortly after finding Venedad's distinguished house in Gergesa, visible from afar, we entered the atrium, around which the rooms were arranged. A couple of old women sat spinning under a canopy. Behind a bulkhead the sheep barked, and on the floor and on the shelves along the wall was a large quantity of Kirsten, bowls and layers of crammed bales. In the middle of the atrium he is a millstone of basalt. A small old lady, wrapped up to her eyes in gray on the rug, stared at us, startled. She was sorting cereal on a bench in a corner, in the shade, and I had not noticed her immediately. The woman quickly slipped into one of the rooms, you could hear voices, and Venedad came out from there.

'Bye, Venedad! The venerable Iran gives you his good and expresses the hope that all goes well with business,' I joked.

'Glad to see you, Jesus,' he replied. 'Of course I remember you. Are you still healing people in Capernaum?

'Yes, today, before dawn, I witnessed the death of a leper,' I said, nodding to my students. 'They all saw it.'

Venedad mused that it was a joke and burst out laughing.

"Well, let's go to my upstairs quarters," he said invitingly, "then we'll talk a little and eat a little.

We walked up the stairs to the roof of the house that was lined with a balustrade. There stood wicker chairs with cushions and a low table of Lebanese cedar wood topped with a papyrus box, empty and unopened dishes, while on floor mats around it lay a large quantity of dates drying. The house stood against the heroes of a hill, and from the roof to which the lord of the house by the looks of it spent many hours, the view opened onto the lake, onto the semicircular bay of Gergesa and onto timers that descended stepped to those blue waters.

We sat down and women brought us food.

Before getting down to business, I politely asked Venedad all about his health, his family and his well-being. He complained about pain in the spine, about having to go out at night to pee quite often, and also that his nose could be blocked for ages. He complained that the government of Judea prohibited him from trading with foreigners. He complained that he was going bald from everything he had to go through and felt that his character was deteriorating. He also related that a ceramic dealer from Jerusalem had almost borrowed a talent of silver from him and had not returned it.

When he had told us all this, Venedad pathetically threatened to call it quits, get rid of his stores and caravans and become a plasterer, or designer of cologne, and then immediately asked if we wouldn't take a couple of Egyptian horses from him, for a soft price. I said those horses wouldn't fit on our boat.

Venedad was quite content with his family though, especially his daughter, born of a wife he had brought from Jasriba. His first wife had died.

'My daughter is clean, my gentle wife silent, what more could I want, dear people?' Spoke Venedad, looking at us cheerfully.

I gave him some advice for his treatment.

The entire environment knew that Venedad was an unscrupulous scalper and as stingy as an old Helleen. He did not even shy away from giving money on growth to Jews with impunity, which had been strictly forbidden by the Torah since time immemorial, and was not ashamed to argue this with the fact that a distant ancestor of his had been an Iberian.

His naive face with the little rocker nose, wreathed by a black curly beard, almost always expressed rested piety, while the meek, slightly bulging eyes irrevocably led those who believed him astray.

He also told me that he had begun to write a book about his life, that for this purpose he had bought the best kind of papyrus from Sebennytos and was working on it every day, scrupulously describing the things he experienced: where he had been, what he had eaten, whether he had slept longer, believing that this experience was invaluable. I could barely restrain myself from asking if he also noted how he had wound someone around his finger.

I grabbed food from a platter and in doing so let my signet ring shine so much that Venedad would notice it yet again, and was amazed that we ate for free am a man who was so on the token. He surprised us with a thick soup with pieces of beef, warming unleavened barley bread with honey, vegetables, mashed beans with garlic, as well as a small fish marinated in spicy sauce, the recipe for which he had brought from Caralis, where he had been with a merchant ship.

When we had eaten our fill, and Venedad was too tired to talk about himself any longer, I asked past my nose if he wouldn't supply a bag of good, powerful kif on the puff. Venedad looked at me in surprise and chuckled.

"What do you want with so much kif, Jesus? He asked, dipping an unhealthy loaf of bread into the hot sheep's pie fat. 'Have you decided to descend into the realm of pleasure and dream with all of them for an extended period of time? And why don't you want to read the money right away? A whole bag, but 24 stay going in, if you don't stomp the knife, will get you nothing more than seven Tyrian starters.'

I explained that I needed the kif for medicinal herbal mixtures, kept silent about the fact that I planned to resell them, and asked why he was negotiating such a high price.

Venedad deflated in an indignant explanation, "Jesus, nothing goes for nothing! After all, even the manure costs money, with which this herb is abundantly improved, so that it becomes full and strong. On top of that, people bring me that kid from afar, you know yourself that this herb is not good for anything in our regions, only for cheap weaving dust. But even there, whence it is brought, you have different qualities. I have top quality. How can I explain that to you... It is like the first pressing of oil, which neat people put through food and which is used for rituals. The second pressing is for slaves, and the third for candlesticks. So why did you come to me without money?

Judas explained how that morning, amidst a crowd of onlookers, we had got into the little boat to recover a little from the people's bustle and come to rest in the lap of the waters, and how we had then remembered that such a good man as Venedad lived in Gergesa, and that we had only half to go, and could not have done anything else but sail to him and give him greetings from his comrade Itan. 'May God protect your business affairs, Illustrious Venedad, for you are an irreplaceable man, you are the jewel in the crown of the cities along the lake and of all Galilee,' Judas rounded off his speech.

This was such blatant, lying flattery that Venedad's refined mind refused to believe it was fictitious.

We settled the matter in seven states, with interest, which I promised to pay in a month.

When we were negotiating, a girl about seven years old came up a second flight of stairs, straight from outside. When he saw her, Venedad completely blossomed.

'That's my daughter lilit,' he said. 'Come here, dear.'

The girl looked very sweet and well-groomed in a hooked bright said overgown. Her shiny black hair was neatly braided, in her little pink ears already sparkled the gold earrings and hooked brown-burnt feet adorned artfully made sandals of light and supple leather.

'Speaking me,' Venedad said proudly, however delusional it sounded considering his pudgy body. 'When she grows up, I won't let her marry, so she can help me nicely with business.'

Lilit held in her hands a peculiar animal, with soft fur. It was reminiscent of a huge mouse, with large hind legs and comically long ears. The little animal trembled and was the incarnation of carelessness. Around its neck was a red silk ribbon.

The girl walked up to us.

"What do you have in your hands there? I asked.

'That beast is called rabbit,' they replied, 'a friend of Dad's brought it for me from Hellas, they only live there, and that still only in one single place, in Olympia, you don't meet them anywhere else! I wanted a cliff badger. An employee of ours often catches them on the rocks near the vines, but cliff badgers bite and are not so sweet. I also wanted a dune cat, which hunts snakes in the desert but they just can't get them for me. Such a cat has such beautiful eyes! Jesus, but how does he save himself when it storms? Then he'll probably get all sand in his ears...?

I gave Lilit a stroke on her head and talked to her some more. She was a bright little thing.

Venedad fetched some kif, to try. I stopped the pipe, and then smoked. The kif was excellent.

A service mate came with fruit and cheese. Then he had her bring the contested bag, a piece of parchment and ink. I write out a confession of guilt. We spent a few more hours on the roof at Venedad's and when it was almost evening, we decided to accept the way back.

Venedad and his daughter descended to wave us off, and Hilde stopped for a moment at the door with a massive bronze holding a scroll of the Torah above it.

Apparently I was so taken with Lilit that she wanted to give her little animal as a gift. I wanted to refuse, her father also tried to protest, but Lilit gave me the rabbit anyway, with anything but childish determination.

As we were about to set sail, a stick old man with a thick black bald head from the sun and a gray beard that had turned almost yellow came walking up to the boat, silently handed me a small crockery, the neck of which had been broken off, and removed sight lying down, without saying a word. I thought it was a childish whim and wanted to throw the worthless piece of crockery on the shore, but Judas decided to take it with him, saying that thrift went before riches.

There was a strong easterly wind, and with the sail raised we had quickly sailed to the middle of the lake. Judas and Philippus do not belong to the oars with a finger, while I lightly steered the boat with the tiller. The rabbit was quivering on the bottom at my feet. Apparently that vibrating was his fundamental occupation.

Then the wind cleared to the north, and there, in the north of the lake, happened what all the fishermen of Galilee so feared: in an instant, like the mood of a woman at Regulus, the weather turned. The north wind carried clouds from the Golan Heights and collided over the lake with the hot desert wind.

Our little ship began to dance on the waves, her boards creaking. Had that blue water faded and began to shelter, as if from anger, and in the garden between the waves yawned a dumb and grave black.

The worst part was that the waves would sometimes persist from one side, then from the other, in great disorder, it seemed as if the lake was making fun of him, and we did not get time to face the little ship with her nose to the waves. The wind was blowing so much that I could no longer hear my own voice, the shores disappeared and were shrouded in dark clouds, and we could only orient ourselves to the sun that hung in a hazy sky in the west, like a faint copper disc. Philippus worked desperately with the oars and shouted something, while I nearly knocked overboard several times, trying to adjust. Judas was sitting on the bottom of the boat, in a puddle, with one hand around the mast, with the other the bag of knives pressed to his chest, around which he had wrapped his cape.

At yet another wave we made such a slide that the rabbit went overboard, but it did not drown but just jumped from wave to wave with stunning activity, and fled hastily in the direction of Capernaum. I was so startled by the storm that I found no strength to marvel at it, while Philippus and Judas did not even notice what was happening.

Soon everything settled down as quickly as it had begun. It was almost evening.

The piece of crockery with the chipped neck came in very handy, I used it to scoop the water off the bottom of the boat.

Philippus and Judas got on their belts.

The bag of kif was soaked.

I did realize what had happened. During the storm, God had known mercy on us, but as always he acted with his own carelessness: since the chance of salvation had come to us-as a whole, and not each one individually, the innocent rabbit had taken all the blessings, and not we sinners. Spiritually speaking, this idea was on a par with the tall tree where lightning struck by God's grace, because it was closest to heaven at that moment.

When we reached the shore, it was almost dark. The peaks of the mountains of Gergesa changed their color from gold to purple. Matthew and Andreas were still not there, but next to the jetty Simon was waiting for us, who informed us that he had caught a peculiar beast from nowhere at the water's edge, with a ribbon around its neck. He asked me if we could prepare it for dinner.

Chapter 21 - Relaxing

We dried the kif, which had gotten soaked during the sailing. My students spend 12 whole days in the city and around the Roman army camp to tout our job. Sometimes legionnaires themselves found their way to the barn. In the blink of an eye we had lost the whole bag, raising 10 times as much money as we owed Venedad. That enabled us to eat better with it, buy new clothes and put aside some silver money, like an apple for the thirst.

Besides the legionnaires were the ordinary inhabitants of Capernaum who bought the kif and the people who came from far and wide to see me. The Libyan herb became a universal remedy for those among them suffering from inner pains. A sufferer who had sniffed the beneficial smoke more easily internalized my admonitions. As before, I requested these people to descend a little away from my barn in Capernaum, so as not to upset Prefect Aurelius, although sometimes I made an exception for new women among the Messiah seekers, who were then allowed to stay for a night.

New lepers came too, but I could no longer help them, in essence days they were desperate people who no longer believed in anything except being haunted by death everywhere.

And so it was. Some died in the extinct wasteland around Capernaum, having been driven out of the city with sticks and stones, and the most stubborn among them with dogs.

Going through these scenes again I think leprosy is the best symbol of human life, after all, of life itself there is no cure either, in legends, herbs and nets, in rain that comes, in the family ties of the Gods or in your own family, in government and friendship, devoid of eroticism... But really and sincerely you can only believe in death: it is he who embodies most neighbors in impeccable religion, for life goes as it goes anyway, but if you believe in death, at least you are not fooling yourself.

Of course I also believed in something, just like everyone else. In that my power had been bestowed. But the miracles I performed could not be credited to myself, I do understand that it was only the inexplicable refraction of light in the crystal ball of my mind.

Since then it was rumored, far beyond the borders of Galilee, that I had cured a leper. In reality, this young man, son of a fisherman, had tried our kif and hoped for it so fanatically for several days in a row that in the end he could no longer get up from his bed and with his groans convinced his loved ones that he was dying. I called this in. I requested to leave us alone and strictly forbade the emaciated youth to smoke if any more. And I forbid my pupils and the cross to sell any more, even if he asked for half a pinch at three times the price. He comes no measure.

A few days later, the club got up and went out cycling with his father. His father tearfully brought me his gifts, smoked fish, cheese and half an ephah of grain.

Or here, the nature of a simple under: imagine that the confession of guilt I had given Venedad had been eaten by a cow, while I had no knowledge of it. I then read thinking that the writing was real, when it no longer existed! The holy conviction of the existence of something, that was the magic, the miracle, that everyone so eagerly awaited.

Every second the world continued to burn, contours disappeared or changed, letters on stone were erased, scrolls perished, and the cow of Chronos left no testimony of our lives.

It was just as well that the industrious Matthew occasionally took notes, even though he could fantasize like a child.

Chapter 22 - The God of Death

It rained for several days straight, which was unusual for these parts. Such a fine rain, as if the odalisques of Jupiter had passed it through a heavenly sieve to turn the drops into dust. The disciples had each gone their separate ways. Andrew said he was going to Bethesda, Matthew to Chorazin. Where the rest were, I did not know. As always, Judas stayed with me, and we almost didn't leave our granary, smoking the last remnants of kif and drinking mead. I had found spiritual peace, and this meager granary was to me like a spacious stone palace whose ceiling was curved like a torque, as if it were a vault of heaven, and also set with glaze as brilliant as hundreds of little stars of orichalcum. Among this couple I was a law and felon, a woman and a girl, a wild animal and a bird. I imagined myself in the course of heaven bodies and drank the heavenly nectar. I was ugly as an infant and clean as a newborn cherub, I was adamant and bold, only to a moment later hide my face shamefully behind the feathers of my wing. Up to a couple of times legionnaires came by to make sure there was no more kif, and there also came by a crazed female who dreamed of being impregnated by a ghost. As far as I could tell from her incoherent words, it was the ghost of a man who had died years ago. I rather gruffly summoned her to return home.

One day it got dry towards evening. I walked to the water's edge. In the damp mist the Sea of Galilee looked endless, like a sea, the opposite shore was a milky white dissolved. It seemed like you could pass through the lake into other vast waters, sail past jagged landscapes and unoccupied islands inhabited by people who knew no lying shame.

I untied one of the fishing boats, took no place, pushed the boat off the dock and slowly removed myself from Capernaum and its layers and stratagems. Soon the shore was out of sight, the sounds of the city could no longer be heard. It had become pitch black. I lay down on the bottom and closed my eyes.

I wanted to find out how to proceed. I knew my languages, had crossed all of Palestine, had been to Egypt and Libya, had spent all that time studying the wisdom from books and the accuracy of words. I could cause almost any random woman to undress and flop down with me with a single glance. I had learned how to make a crowd submit to me.

I gained an eye for the original basis of verbal matter, doors of places of worship opened before me, and the buds of flowers.

But all this brought me colors and feelings that could not comfort me. I lay at the bottom of the boat and wept, because I was lonely in the midst of my disciples, of casual women and of the sick and distraught people who came to me.

It was suddenly all too painfully clear to me that this lake was just a lake, and that there was no escape. I carry in this boat across the surface of the water, as if on a platter, in front of those who were preparing to plunge his ritual knife into me.

I understand that this whole journey was only a removal from the home of my childhood, from my hometown of Nazareth, facing the naïve dream of how to drop a grain of meaning into the world.

For a long time I had made no attempt to find out where my mother was, because her job was tormenting me. I did not find out Coby was my real father and I understand that this one, even if he was still alive, wanted nothing to do with me.

But I suddenly felt insanely ashamed that I had been so heartless to old Joseph. I had laughed at his craft as a carpenter, and he knew it, but had kept his mouth shut. He had never laid a finger on me, other than my mother. Yes, he was my stepfather, but he was, I believe, the only one who had truly loved me, even if he never flaunted that love. He had been so happy to help me, once when I had put together a small boat from wood chips, to launch it in the village pond....

According to Jewish law, I was a stranger to him, an illegitimate bastard, a mamzer, and he wanted to teach me the carpentry trade, which he himself loved so much. Perhaps I would have become happy, if I had helped him make furniture, and crosses for crucifixions, in the end, in that way often real bastards, who deserved death, received their just punishment.

Where was I rushing to? What else had I acquired but an exceptional level of despair, so strong that I could offer people healing me?

Who had any use for my discoveries? The mean, who carried prophets on their hands, and then, after the admonitions of Levites, demanded to crucify or stone him...? First Jews washed some unfortunate prophet's feet with their tears, and then they ran to Jerusalem before the prefect's stretcher, begging him to kill the false prophet, because the miracle had failed. Yet another miracle.

A short time ago news had come that Herod Antipas had had John put to death, whom I had seen as the Messiah. Beautiful that Antipas had chosen a quick and painless death for him, we got John foolishly cut off his head with a tale of his Patriarch scimitar, as carried by the guards in his court....

Let those motley people believe that this death sentence of John was a miracle! If you want miracles, you can get them too.

People did not care whether I had read a human being or glued a broken amphora.

Then what was I doing it all for? Perhaps because silent learned Jews wrote down all those ringing stories, twisted them mercilessly to their own tastes in the process, and in the process imagined themselves the creators of the universe?

I couldn't even have buried poor Joseph, that quiet father of mine, devoid of any pride. Yes, father. That was the best way I could call him. I should have brightened his old age, he was turning 111.

I suddenly understood that he had been the only one I had loved myself... But on the 26th day of the month of abib, he died.

What was I now? A talkative and kif merchant who had brought the entire Roman garrison into higher I swear. A renegade. A boatload. I didn't even know the fate of my own children that I had made with all kinds of women in all kinds of places over all these years. What should I talk to me about when I meet myself along the way? About the properties of numbers and letters? I would spit it in myself's face! ignoramus! What did you know?

I did not know what was with me before I was born, and most likely what would be after I died. In fact, I am surrounded by total and absolute ignorance. And the private knowledge I did have, it wasn't even worth a penny....

I wept, huddled on the bottom of the boat, with my knees folded on my arms, as I had often done as a child. In that moment, my despair could no longer be the source of my strength, I just sincerely wanted to die, because I knew that this one had something horrible about it, because I understood how wonderful that feature of the day was, had us be, free of everything, devoid of but a hint of fear or haughtiness, cowardice or betrayal.

And the untouchability. And maybe the chance to meet Joseph.

Suddenly I felt how I was pressed against the bottom of the boat, as if some gigantic, invisible hands were lifting it quickly and cautiously to the sky. I opened my eyes and saw above me a giant black resigned with a long nose. It was stunningly handsome, almost merging with the sky and looking at me with yellow almond-shaped eyes in which compassion could be read. Above these bright eyes, no human eyes, and the narrow forehead breaks long pointed ears. It was the face of absence, for whom all that lived lost its meaning, and experienced a rapturous shudder through me.

I looked overboard, into the boat at a dizzying height. In the distance, peaks could be seen in the light of the starry mountain, while the lake below me seemed like a vague, dark pool, with irregular banks. Why here and there tiny dots of light could be seen, there burned the neighbors of travelers and fishermen....

On either side of the majestic black head, a large crowd of appearing, semi-translucent naked people, reminiscent of Egyptians, dried up, they seemed to walk after each other but suddenly stopped. They looked at me strangely, expecting something. Something was wrong with each of them. I discerned a man with his stomach ripped open, a deadly skinny woman, an infant whose umbilical cord had not been cut, a young man with his hand held off....

The black creature that held my boat in its palm radiated power and greatness, and I understood my shock that it was Anubis accompanying the caravan of people who had died that day to eternity. They were at the beginning of a journey and had to continue to follow the orbit of the planets.

As I longed for death, the scarlet walk of grief around me had been so bright that Anubis must have seen it with his divine gaze on the deserted, ripple-free plane of the lake. He took pity and decided to help. Somehow I understand that to express my agreement and join the procession, all I had to do was say that one word "yes," in Egyptian, and Anubis would take me with him to swear where there would be no more sorrow, but I hesitated, it was a weighty decision.

The brilliant black head moved its ears impatiently, and I thought I heard the voice of Judas, full of excitement and love.

The same instant I came to, at the bottom of the boat. The fog over the lake had lifted; there were stars. In the darkness, a point of light flickered somewhere off to the side. All this time the boat had been bobbing on the still water, not far from the dock. I understand that Judas had lit the lamp, walked with it to the waterfront to look for his teacher and thus saved my life. My little Judas, jildi ...! In the little boat there was only one belt. I grabbed it and steered the little boat to the shore.

Chapter 23 - The love of Philippus

We sat by a campfire by the lake that evening as usual. The star Tsedek approached Alma's lands and was as bright as if it wanted to warm human creatures with its mercy. We were all there. Andreas had returned from Bethsaid and told the news. Simon had baked flat, unleavened lentil rolls for everyone on a stone. The waves murmured across the sand, the flames of the campfire shot one way and then another, and Simon had to move the stone. It was one of those evenings to which I had attached little meaning, but which, it is now perfectly clear to me, had become the true and best texture of my life that on other days would be forgiven for bitterness and vanity.

The conversation was about equal love.

Recently there was a large boat moored there whose owner made his money by sailing people and cargo from one over to another. One of those on board was a youth named Jonah. He was handsome to look at: slender, gardens, with a narrow hook nose and green eyes. He had hairless care, perfumed hair, clean-shaven cheeks and soft clothes, as well as a lilting voice. It turned out that the boy was born in Hippo and had come to me because he had heard that I was not as strict as other teachers. The reason was that he was irrepressibly attracted to men. In Hippo he had become the object of ridicule and bullying, his parents were ashamed of him and his peers shunned him.

What bothered him most, however, was that his acquaintances refused to see him as a man and did not refer to him as anything other than lilla. He rightly believed that he could continue to be considered a real man if he fell for men and gave himself to them. He daughter that he did not live in Jerusalem, bore even, if spoiled scribes of the new generation had more power than in the hinterland and could have taken him to court, even though male love was not forbidden in the Torah, that Time only spoke of the prohibition of intercourse with a hermaphrodite: 'do not lie to a man with the womb and a woman', and the prohibition bed explained only from the concern for the hermaphrodite, who could be fertilized but if it came to birth would die during the birthing contractions. Incidentally, I had heard a venerable gray hard in his oral commentary on the Torah speak of the permissibility of intercourse with a hermaphrodite through the back gate.

Yes, such a heartless, well off the tongue scribe came to prove to the crowd in a square dead ease that this angelic youth Jonah...was the greatest danger threatening Israel. The scribes, the messengers of God's will... That's where they had these empty heads in such great tongues? How far they went in their monstrous faith into the palace chambers of hatred! The wise Hillel of Babylon told them, "What you do not want done to you do not do to another; therein lies the whole Torah," but even his voice drowned in the murmur of the crowd.

The wisdom of our people had almost disappeared under a thick layer of sand.

Jonah confessed that it couldn't go on like this, and he asked me to cure him of his weakness for the male updraft. I thought that was ridiculous.

"Your lust is your life," I said, "can I sometimes cure you of life?

He was surprised that I didn't scold or admonish him, and his contrite face beamed.

"People do not see you as a man and me as a man, and therefore I understand you very well, dear Jonah! Added I, with which she was finally comforted.

I liked that Jonah stayed with us for a while.

Philippus immediately took care of him. He spread a bit of dry reed for the lad, shorted all kinds of delicacies for him and spoiled him in every possible way, after which he also laid on him like a woman. To their mutual satisfaction, by the way. I put no obstacle in his way.

But that evening, when we were all sitting around the campfire, having finished our sandwiches with small smoked fish, Matthew suddenly, out of the blue, began to accuse Philippus of being too carried away by Jonah's song: he said that it could end badly with us if people in the city got wind of it, the elder and the rabbi could, he said, even initiate a targeting of it its outcome was highly uncertain.

Jonah had gone to town, sent out by me to pick up a kaddim palm-sikera somewhere. Philippus said nothing.

'Let's sell Jonah to the Roman garrison,' Andreas joked, but so foolishly that no one even smiled, while Philippus and with so much wrath obliquely looked at him that it looked as if he might attack at any moment.

Everyone is waiting for my decision.

'Mathheus,' I said, 'Let's imagine for a moment that you were tired of wandering around cities and spots with me any longer, and had, say, built a nest somewhere in Jerusalem or so, in a little back date near the snake gate, where the scriptores live, the healers, the fortune tellers and the Chaldese sorceresses...'

"No, Jesus," Matthew fulminated, "I'm not abandoning you, why do you say that?

'Let us imagine it anyway,' I continued, 'for it is the power of imagination that seems to the warriors the victory, the poets the ability to write poems: with his imagination Barak defeated the Canaanites with the iron chariots. Anyway, you, as a connoisseur of the religion, have found your foothold, become a scriptor, neatly bring your gifts to the Baalberit, you copy the trade documents, the real and the forged wills and the books about the temple. You massage your bald head with holy oil, you dye and trim your beard and look so pleasing to God that the pilgrims give you coin money. You may even be married...'

'That was all that was missing, Jesus,' exclaimed Matthew, and his face expressed genuine suffering, and everyone smiled. 'Stop laughing at me, Master! That I would go live in a cottage somewhere with a helpless bitch at the snake gate, where they find a robbed dead person every morning...?'

'Listen to my whole story, Matthew,' I said with a frown. 'Anyway, you had enough money at a perish and decided not to put it into preserving the temple, but to leave it at home. And at home you had two holes, one was whole, the other had no bottom. In which of these two vessels then do you light your gold?'

Everyone was silent. The fire snapped. Matthew furrowed his brow. He made no haste to answer, sunk in contemplation.

'Throughout,' he finally replied hesitantly.

"Very good! Said I delightedly. 'You must remember the words of the great Rabbi Menachem Mendel Tabbai, that true wisdom is able to turn a few drops of its seed into a few gold coins in a day?'

'Yes,' Matthew nodded.

"Yes, and that means, Matthew, that we can equate gold with the male seed.

"Yes," he agreed, "but what does that have to do with the inappropriate relationship of Philippus and Jonah?

'I'll tell you that,' I said, looking at him sternly.

'Everyone has heard how you made your choice, putting your gold in the whole barrel. But you have forgotten that another wise rabbi, Nittai of Arbela, said that a woman is a vessel without a bottom. So a man is a vessel with a bottom. Taking all the saying into account, you have confessed that you are willing to put your seed into a man.'

Matthew wanted something against it, even made an indignant hand gesture, but he couldn't.

'So what do we see, dear people? Why did those rabbis say that? Continued. 'They said that because of this: through a woman the seed is poured into insatiable eternity, it is no longer yours, it turns into an unquenchable fire. The woman continues the disease of life. So therefore let's not let Philippus fall too hard; perhaps somewhere he is wiser than we are. After all, he has already known the bitterness of marriage and can compare one with the other... But in doing so, we must also not forget the proverb of the Arabian nomads, "A lad's ass is splendid, but it is not the gateway to eternity. There is something of pity in that proverb... Therefore, choose, but remember, eternity is unpredictable. You can pour in a sea of seed, and it will dry up and leave only dead salt on the surface. But you can also throw in a few barely intelligible words and create a flourishing empire, where your old age will be adorned with the love of your heirs. In this, then, everyone can make their own choice.'

'But can you also cure Jonah and send him after Hippo, to his parents' home?' Asked Simon, and he clarified, 'After all, we are but dull beers to him and quite old age, I'm sure he won't stay with us forever, he'll be looking for new feelings. And angry members might do whatever to him, as gullible as he is.'

'Who's to say, Simon,' I replied. 'Maybe Jonah will stay with us as long as the holy sanhedrin in us according to the word chenek crossed out. That word is the best medicine against both love and life.'

Philippus brightened.

'Thank you, Jesus, for understanding me,' he said. 'I only have to imagine someone coming after Jonah or I immediately feel such pain in my heart. What if they enslave him through trickery and deceit? After all, he can only sing and dance with a tambourine. My heart is torn at the thought of him sighing at work in the fields, under the relentless sun and the knot. What if he ends up on the purple donkey?

Yes, Philippus did not worry for nothing. Knaves like Jonah saw themselves as the cleanest among men for a reason, but they were defenseless in the face of the world's arrogance and brute force, which over once was not at all a denial of their manhood, for even a Lion in the wilderness of Judea could trap you.

I threw some sprinkles on the fire and remembered how I had once seen a renowned ship from Corinth in the port city of Tyre, with purple sails and a prow decorated with the wooden head of a donkey. An enterprising man, evidently inspired by the Hellenic saying that a brothel is a much more reliable investment than a ship, had had a floating lupinarium built, on which boys and boys were kept, the children of slaves, as well as some amazing monstrosities for entertainment: a woman with four tits, a blind, toothless albino negro who had reached the height of Zeus in the craft of fellator, an old Libyan woman with a hairy face who with her gaze in her whispering voice could bring a man into a state of sweet half-sleeping is to fellowship with him had until friends or relatives and carried home. There was also a learned hermaphrodite on the ship with six fingers on each hand who indulged men with an artful leather rod, during which occupation he engaged in conversation so refined that even the sages of Mylete would have found satisfaction in it.

The painted head of the donkey saw ephebophiles and pleasure seekers in all the great port cities from Kirinia to Thrace, the ship of dreams also came as far as Chersone on the Pontus Euxinus. Worthy men visited it and paid good money for this happy science, but to end up in the skin of a young slave was less sweet. In other words, at what happened on that ship, even fornication in the bathhouses of Antioch paled.

'Do not worry, my dear Philippus,' I said, 'the purple sleet will not appear on the Sea of Galilee, even though it is sometimes called a sea.' And moderate gentlemen's love, that is good, King David already spoke of his lover Jonathan, that his love far exceeded that of the woman. You just have to know how to measure up. In everything. In smoking, in laughing, in getting angry.grieving should also be done in moderation. Otherwise you lose the willpower and the spirits of the earth will do a will through you. A frenzied gentleman lover and crier can go so far in the power of that spirit that he simply kills his lover just because it peels off the skin of the Indian fruit from the wrong side for him. The letter of such a person's name can naturally jump from one place to another and form unnecessary, at times even dangerous combinations. Virtue rests, as the teacher Socrates said, on the mastery of lust.'

Soon Jonah was back from the store, with a jug of sikera. From the money he had left over from that I had given him, he had bought himself some sweets of honey and crushed berries. He came and sat by the fire and began to say something, smiling, his face particularly tender and youthful in the light of the fire. He took a few sips of sikera, was immediately tipsy, walked to the barn, found in his belongings had beaded string of cornaline, put it on, then threw off his chiton, stayed behind with only loincloth on and began to dance with his tambourine. The white silks of his loincloth stood out brightly against his tawny skin, which though covered with a short, soft coat, his pearly white teeth shone, with his feline manners he had something of the goddess Bast, and we cast our eyes on him. In tune with his predatory movements, we clapped our hands and chanted a song.

In all the inner darkness that surrounded Capernaum in the lake, and sleeping is well, in all this shaky and unwell world, he danced like a god, just for us, and it was beautiful, Jonah embodied the blossoming male beauty, as it is in the period of transformation from youth to young man.

Only Matthew did not give in to the spell, he walked to the barn, set himself at the door, raised a lamp, once lit, and sat down to write with a weighty face.

Jonah stayed with us another week, then in the city he met a commercial traveler, Hellene, no longer the youngest, but well-to-do. An hour later Jonah gave himself to him in the city's thermal baths. The next day he led his caravan out of the city and then Jonah with him.

From the goat and the man the faun is born. From the goat and the woman the satyr. From a satyr and a nymph works the youth Ampel was born, who was loved by Dionysos and became the star in the palace of Tsedek. But what I always wanted to know was what in the world of phantoms was born of two men. One thing I know for sure: two men in bed was better than a donkey and a mule harnessed together for a chariot. A mule and a donkey could never walk side by side, while men could always walk through the same door if they wanted to.

Sometimes I sometimes think that Jonah is still dancing at the edge of the lake, although all of us who watched him then with wide eyes have long since turned into mummies. The stones sing under his feet, are ground to sand, the local fishing boats endlessly cast their nets, the little girls turn into embittered old women, the mothers curse a negligent sons, the hibiscus bleeds out hundreds of times, and Jonah dances on and on; by day his lithe body seems dark, in the darkness it radiates light, and if you throw him a handful of kernels of the Phoenician apple at his feet in a moonlit night, he sees them as precious anthrax, it gets down on its knees to pick them up, and at that moment, without any redundancy, you can put your fiery zajien in his mouth.

Chapter 24 - The Clergy

I led a quiet life in Capernaum, but the wild rumors about me did not quiet down. As if something like a fairy spirit was riding along the roads and doing something every day in the name of Jesus of Nazareth. By the way, people kept pouring in: from Dekapolis, Judea, Phoenicia, from Macheron and Massada. They came riding on donkeys or approaching in boats.

Most of the people, of course, came from Galilee and neighboring Samaria. And almost all of them wanted to get something. Bring something. And pocket healing, and for the rest come the whole, treacherous healthy world bubble disappear into Tannin's meal. Aprim, my teacher of medicine, was right when he said that a man in his sickness was either holy law or thinking only of himself and willing to strangle his neighbor for his betterment. Usually the latter, of course.

I understood that my name was beginning to take on a life of its own in people's imaginations, but the Jewish people should have known for once how I sometimes hated those same people.

Somewhere beyond Gegresa, beyond the mountain range, not the via Regia that led from Egypt to Damascus and beyond, to the ancient city of Retsef. One time my timer came with a tall Ethiopian hotshot with a neglected tumor in his abdomen. Slaves had lugged him a thousand and a half stadia; he came to me from the kingdom of Aksum, across the sea from Eritrea. Much of the Rijsbosch traveled with the ship that was now waiting for them in the port of Etsion-Hevera.

He was so weakened that he could barely speak and the heavy gold signet rings fell from his barren brown fingers.

Through an interpreter, he told me that he was a descendant Bas of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba (and thus was from the same tribe as me), but that was hard to believe looking at his black, wrinkled face with floppy ears, just like the trony of an old monkey. The only thing was that his skin was just slightly lighter than that of most Ethiopians.

I could no longer help him. His servants carried him to the city; a few days later he was dead, having found a last refuge among the fishermen and gardeners of Kapernaum.

How had he heard of me? Probably from a Jewish merchant who visited tracts of land in search of cheap elm bone, leopard skins, ebony and rare olfactory substances.

One time they arrived with a young man with progeria. Reportedly, with this disease, you rarely made it to 10 years old, but this one was 20. His body was aging at breakneck speed and he looked like a pilgrim from another star, where time went faster. I rubbed his forehead and hands with aromatic oil, which was all I could do. Old age is incurable, even if it is premature.

Often people came with dying children. I only came to save a few, and one of them was a heavy-breathing whitehead from the north, his throat was inflamed and therefore a fish had formed in it that I pierced with my finger. But always when I saved a child even though it happened so rarely, I felt guilty, because I was condemning it to life: perhaps God had sent this soul to earth for one last time by way of punishment, and then I made sure that this punishment continued to the end, so that these people learn the endless pain of the world, drank this goblet to the bottom.

After all, the most surprising thing that existed Macon was the realization of the reality of your own flesh and blood striving regardless of your will for only one thing, to disintegrate into atoms and sink into the apeiron, into the impersonal over substance, as defined by Democritus of Abdera, at least if the copy of this teacher's Greek text that I got my hands on had been faithfully copied.

And, of course, the old people of Capernaum shuffled in daily, one with pain in his back, another suffering from insomnia. Against these and other trivial ailments, herbs offered relief. I picked them in the meadows around Capernaum, went to dry them in the barn, rubbed them and mixed them. Wild marjoram against Asthma. A decoction of zoeta worked soothingly. Of withania at loss of male vigor... Fenugreek, mint, poppy seeds....

Sunlight had harmful effects on a small number of plants, so they had to be dried in the shade, while hyosciamus, thorn apple and belladonna had to be picked even at night so as not to lose their properties.

From the dried offshoots of plum tree, silver fir and pine, rubbed with garlic and drawn on wine, you come to make good poultices against sores and warts.

Trying to compose the new medicines from pulverized stones, organs and blood of animals, I figured out that the powder of dried black cockroaches was unbeatable for dropsy, while the powder of ladybugs was for toothache.

Beeswax healed burns, but only if it was fresh, of a yellow color; old, darkened wax proved unsuitable.

And people with joint pain I recommended taking the boat to the healing hot springs of Hamat-Gader, a half-day boat ride from Capernaum with wind.

Bruises, fractures. It was nice when a bid at a fracture wasn't exposed. Dislocated arms and legs I lasted back, broken bones I splattered with two planks that I tied together with a rope. Some stupid healers worked fractures with a powder made of animal bones, but that had never helped anyone, only worsened the process of healing, so I never did that.

I had copper sticks with a hook at the end with which I pulled teeth and molars, and a small sharp Egyptian knife with a handle of nephrite with which I opened and cleaned wounds. I always held these instruments over the fire before use to remove the dirt from them, including the particles of dust and grease from touching hands.

Sometimes I caught frogs, burned them in a campfire and sold the frog ash to women who used it to get rid of unwanted hair on legs and other parts of the body. And for irregular cycles, I advised women to drink an infusion of parsley.

Against hemorrhoids, candle wax made from equal parts gray Egyptian salt, bovine bone marrow, figs and olibanum helped.

I knew for sure that medicine was the ability to adopt the beneficial effects of nature, and therefore if you wanted to achieve success in it, you should emulate nature and not people, even if they were reputed to be excellent physicians. 'Ask the cattle, and it teaches you, to the birds of the sky, and it announces it to you,' said a Jew in ancient times, and he was right.

We no longer traded kif because we still owed Venedad 10 starters, were in no hurry to return them and had nowhere else to get kif.

One warm day I was lounging by the lake under a pistachio tree, trying to read the words that floated before me in various directions: they were the fragments of human lives, of certain complaints and allegations, fragments of ecstatic prayers, pleas for help, inscrutable commentaries on sacred texts, cures previously unknown to me by means of poisons, and long passionate letters from the living and the dead, filled with pain. I understand the perfect language in which everything was revealed; this is probably how he had to have been before the migdan bavel. Then I suddenly realized that I also saw my own life, expressed in numbers and letters; I eagerly sent after it and saw the Hellenic word kopssav with the Indian numeral 13 next to it (this counting wise I had learned from a wandering Brahmin from Benares). The Hellenic word flared a red light, the number three began to move, his curls took on a resemblance to the outline of a human being, and I understood that it was the venerable high priest Joseph Caiaphas himself. The 1 in his hand appeared to be a staff of black wood.

At that moment, Simon woke me up and reported that two clergymen had arrived from Jerusalem who wanted to speak to me.

'They are waiting for you in the synagogue, Jesus,' said Simon excitedly, 'and they have a bodyguard with them. Maybe it's better if you don't go? Let's take the boat and experience; after all, you don't have to expect anything good from Jerusalem.'

I reasoned that if they had wanted to pick me up they would have come to the lakeside unexpectedly, while they were now sitting neatly in the synagogue; therefore, it was foolish to flee. Without much pleasure I went after these guests, asking myself why Caiaphas, whom I had never seen before, had appeared to me so clearly in my dreams. I had even remembered his face, with an attractive, well-fed beauty, capable of ennobling any vice.

Andrew and Philip were not there, Judas only helping the fishermen cast their nets from the boat, and Simon and Matthew went with me to the synagogue.

Incidentally, third parties did not let them in. The clergymen wanted to speak to me without witnesses present, only Rabbi Avdon was allowed to be present, and he could hardly hide his joy as the spiritual authorities finally took an interest in me, for it was clear that the visit did not bode well for me.

The clergy had brought their servants and bodyguards. This Avdon-decorated delegation had taken up residence in a house near the synagogue, where important guests were usually accommodated. There was also a horse stable there. From the house, a beautiful shrub-lined path led through the garden to the mikva.

My disciples and the four warriors accompanying the cleric remained behind in the synagogue courtyard.

The two clergymen were waiting for me, seated behind a table covered with a colorful cloth that had been specially carried into the synagogue for that purpose. Avdon stood beside them, trying to guess every desire of his guests. Their names were Elisiah and Hanoch and they were nagids, helpers of the high priest, and enjoyed great power, especially in Jerusalem and its environs. Elisja was mature and stately and had an unusual beard, brown, with an even gray in the middle, just a white streak that had just been applied to a lime solution. His long, expensive robe of sky blue she said in his silver necklace with 12 sky blue stones, after the number of the tribes of israel, gave him a royal allure, but his gaze, there in the hidden uncertainty did not escape me, indicated that this sensual and probably shrewd man had arrived at his high office by chance. After all, kings and clerics were not supposed to have doubts, not about their greatness and not about their rightness, or else things would end badly for them.

Hanoch was small in stature, but as much as twice as broad as Elisja, with a beard of dark copper, and unusually full eyebrows from under which a pair of small and indifferent eyes peeped out, as of a lizard. This man had obviously never known any doubt when he acted on behalf of Israel, which spoke from all of his stocky, white-clad stature. His face was reminiscent of a hired bailiff. Around his wrists are thin gold bracelets.

Both their heads were adorned by a kidar with a large number of cages and in it with a sky blue thread the embroidered words "God's Sanctuary. Both were members of the holy order,

Disobedience to his judgment was punishable by death, and I understood immediately that there was no point for these people to open my veins and make me feel blood. Enough blood had flowed at their request; they were used to it.

'I welcome you, venerable nagides. You wished to see me? I asked, taking a seat on a small stone, rug-covered bench on the east wall.

"What do you think, Jesus, why have we been on our way here for two days? Asked Elisja.

"Just to have a little chat with the pagans of Galilee? I answered cheerfully.

Very slipped a hint of annoyance across Elisja's face; Hanoch's remained unfazed.

'Jesus,' Elisja said, 'I know how you can prank illiterate people, but seriously now. Your fate is being decided. Recently you have simultaneously committed some crimes in several cities, from Virsavia you have stolen money from the congregation, and Banias you have publicly offered a sacrifice next to the road to the damned pagan god Pan, saying that it was he who had sent you to this world with a glad tidings; in the process you have insulted the clergy. In Hebron, you held a criminal prayer meeting for Genios, threw olibanum into the fire and made predictions based on the smoke and power of the fire. In Ejn-Gedi, you mixed an afarsemon liquor with wine, got some women drunk with it at night and had intercourse with them in the name of the Messiah, right in the synagogue, in the process relieving and tying up the rabbi who tried to stop you. And that is only a small part of your crimes. We are here to hold you accountable.

'Highly honored nagides,' I said, 'you contradict yourself. You say that I did all that simultaneously in different cities. Then how could I have done that?'

'And you also summoned deaths throughout Judea and displayed your magic skills. And called for disturbances, for the overthrow of the Roman government,' Hanoch said, ignoring my question, and he added stealthily, 'Of this also High Priest Joseph has been notified, and he has sent us here.'

I was out of it, thinking they were making fun of me. For a while we all shut up and all you could hear was the snort of the vadsome Hanoch. I had to think involuntarily that he was probably playing the game of love with his wife without changing the stony expression of his face; or rather, she would ride him, given his awkward physique, and then he would lie there on his back without further participation, like a statue.

Rabbi Avdon looked at me like a hyena, intending to say something, but he didn't dare to insert himself into the conversation and coughed into his fist.

'And now listen carefully, Jesus,' Elisja said solemnly, satisfied that he had better impress me. 'From all this it follows that your cream does not belong to you and harms Israel. We bet that you did not commit the crimes previously laid out and that certain crooks simply used your name, although you are, in my eyes, an equally pathetic crook, but your fame is the chimera on a rabid bull. And that bull is you, Jesus. And what does one do with a bull gone mad...? Don't you say anything? No, because you do know that mammals must be put to death.'

Hanoch nodded in agreement as I looked past me. I had to think of a dignified answer, a justification, for this was one of those cases where words decided one's fate. I understood (and that gave me hope) that the nagids did not have a ready-made verdict against me, they did not yet know what awaited me, that the sanhedrin would have to decide the case based on the report they would make.

'Good, so let me be here then,' I said, 'but I do have my own voice, I am a talking bull, you cannot deny that, if only because I am speaking to you.'

'Yes,' Elisja spoke thoughtfully. 'You can't deny that. So?

'Think back, wise nagides, to the none said in the parable of the bull who had one voice in life, but after his death was given seven: His two horns became trumpets, the bones of two legs became flutes, his house was made into a drum, his large intestine turned into the strings of a harp, while his small intestines became those of the zither... I only want to say that my death will excite the people even more, new crowds will flock together from among the people who see me as a teacher who has innocently sounded the slaughter. This is the way people are: only an ordinary man has to die and he becomes thrice pious, no one says anything ugly about him, but only a prophet has to die or he turns into a deity. So by condemning me to death the sanhedrin makes sure that this whole music sounds right up and thereby gives the venerable Caiaphas a bad night's sleep.

It occurred to me, when I had spoken, that I saw very briefly something of satisfaction on Elisja's face, which incidentally immediately gave way again to the earlier distrustful grimace. Hanoch continued to stare unfazed before him, as if he could see the unworthy outside world right through the walls of the synagogue.

Elisja turned his head to the local rabbi and his in a commanding tone, "Avdon, out.

The rabbi took a bow, slowly backed away, toward the exit, and pulled the door firmly shut behind him.

'I will be frank with you, Jesus,' Elisja said, and his voice now sounded almost jovial. 'On the eve of Passover, you organized a pogrom at the temple. That was you, not one of the people who spent themselves before you. You promised to destroy the temple. Do you understand what is happening in Israel? Around us are the enemies, among us are the enemies. Prefect Pontius has ordered the accursed pagan banners of the Roman legions to be brought inside the city; he wants to confiscate possession of the temple. The crowned antipa sent a protest to Emperor Tiberius. The protest was granted, but how many Jews died in the clashes with the legionaries! To strangle us by any means possible, the prefect has introduced taxes on everything, even the sale of fruit! He still has not given up surveillance of the high priest's robe, and he justifies this with his fear that it will be stolen, but in reality it is a judicial investigation! And then you come up, a Jew, and then you said as a traitor the seed of rebellion... Destroy the temple! That was built for 46 years! And which has not yet been completed! Which even without you is already on the brink of destruction! You had better promise to finish it! Not then, come on, call it off with your own powers, Jesus, you are the Messiah after all. No, you're not a Messiah, you're betraying your homeland! The faith of your fathers! You are a blasphemer! Because the temple is all we have! And then you come, a puny, self-absorbed man... A haughty one... That is equally devastating... We have no respect for you, but people have picked up your name. And three days ago a little boy threw himself on a legionnaire and was stabbed to death before my eyes! Of ways to lead like you! And who listens to you? Martyrs, sinners and penitents of various kinds! You dance on until you are put to death, hung on the cross, like Shaul from Emmaus, the sorcerer and heretic!

At the end of this impassioned speech, he stood up, shook his fist in the air, and sat down again, staring ahead and up, at the round window of the North Wall, as if to call the heavens to witnesses, and I thought he had made a very bad mistake with that stabbed to death little boy bell. Unlike the sikarians, I had never called for murder, on anyone, even if the world had only not gone to ground because it still counted repentant murderers.

'Honored nagids,' I said as humbly as I could. 'God witnessed that cattle near the walls of the temple had defiled a holy place. I foolishly grabbed a leash and chased it away from there. After all, that was not even a herd for sacrifice, but for sale. So sit there so hard pressed for merit while the pilgrims selflessly brought their coins to the treasury of the temple day and night? And as for the destruction of the temple, yes, I said that. And I regret that. I was too hot-tempered, I don't want to destroy the temple, forgive me.

"Be sincere," Hanoch said, "explain to us why you said that!

And they stared at me, like hyenas booty trying to get away. Silence comes, that would only increase my guilt, but my answer had to ring highly sensible, preferably in words from Scripture.

'The pace is magnificent, wise nagides, yet it is made with hands,' I spoke with a sigh. "We ourselves created our temple, which is the cornerstone of my doubt. It is no wonder it is being built on for so long. I spoke of destruction, because I have not forgotten the words of the prophet Isaiah, who said that surely God is nothing to be replaced: a graven image is the maker of the artist, and the goldsmith covers it with gold and furnishes it with silver chains, and do you really not grasp, from the foundations of the earth, that it is He who sits enthroned on the circle of the earth, and that His inhabiting Her is like the locust? He has made the firmament like a canvas, and cast it out like a tent to dwell in... But who does not listen to the prophet, by investing our temple with gold, we decorate it and are like the locust in it. Therefore do we seek in it earthly beauty and earthly treasures, when we have been given the great temple of the universe, the most magnificent tent to dwell in, one that needs no adornment at all?

"Then why are you wearing a gold signet ring, Jesus? Asked Elisja.

'That is a gift from a good man,' I explained, 'I wear it not for beauty on my finger, but as a prayer, in memory of this man. I did not sell the ring, even when I was very distressed... You requested me to be honest, and I am speaking openly to you, most righteous nagids. In my mind echo like songs the truths of the holy prophecies. And why that little boy threw himself on the legionnaire, I do not know. Probably God is saving Israel from suicides that way.

The nagids take one look at each other, apparently not immediately seeing how God's grace was reflected in this. But after all, they knew as well as I did that the Creator's word must sometimes bear more resemblance to a flat stone than to unleavened bread with lamb, on that the pain of broken teeth and molars gave men food for thought, for the thoughtless had no need of it. What sense from above cared for a sleeping vessel? Or to sleep?

"Did you hear us? Asked Elisja.

'Yes,' I said.

'Then, if you want to continue to live, get rid of your name. Then perhaps Israel will not come to get rid of you. Remember none has been said: the man who is sad, without obeying the cleric, this man will die, and thus evil will be driven out of Israel.'

Then Hanoch began a long and monotonous far yet, as if he were publicly reciting the Torah at the Feast of Tabernacles, about humility and humility, but his words were lifeless and dead dull.

Thus ended our conversation. In my exchange of thoughts with the nagids, I found further confirmation of the fact that the whole world was made up of words, that they were made only of different materials: of bone, of metal, of glass and salt, and the fate of each person depended only on how successfully he could combine these or those substances at his service, in search of the absolute matter, the password to all other words, the key to eternal life. The main thing was to get that in time, before the grass grew right through you.

Further, I understand that words could not be falsehood, only strong or weak, like the various animals, poisonous like the mandrake, and useless like the vine of sodom, but absolute falsehood did not exist, because the lie that emanated from the heart always became truth. And if anyone anywhere pretended to be me and brought undeniable evil to people, I had to Leiden for his sins. What else was I supposed to do?

When I came out of the synagogue, I shared the content of my conversation with Simon and Matthew. All this time they had been standing peacefully chatting with the clergy's bodyguards; they had common acquaintances in Jerusalem.

We returned to the lake, to our barn. It was a warm evening, nor did the night promise coolness, and I installed myself for sleep in an old fishing net hung between two willows. That lay snug, and from the lake came a small, yet refreshing breeze. The shore swallows crossed, the Golden tones of the sunset giving way to brown. I wiped a strand of hair from my face, thinking that I was making this hand movement without the participation of my mind. But what did that mean? I watched the branches of the trees above me point, and I understood that the movement of my hand was as thoughtless as the movement of the willow branch. What then governs me, if I could move my hand unmindfully? I suddenly understood with a shudder that everything around was moving rhythmically, subject to the training of the strings of the cosmic harp.

'On the rivers of Babylon we sat weeping, on the willows we hung our harps,' mourned the sons of Israel proudly, but that was naïve nonsense, for no one was with Martin to silence the music of life, even if he were the richter Samegar if need be, because this music did not emanate from our harps at all, it was always there and it would always be there, even the deaf heard it, and my body only shook under its dance, while reason tried to watch it, looking for words for it. In the same way, the leg of a lamb being slaughtered shook when the butcher's heels once hit a tendon. Similarly, the wings of a dead, decaying bird deceived by the wind trembled.

In the beginning of time God threw the harp on the earth and fell asleep like a log, but its strings sounded through itself and permeated everything. Don't wait for him to awaken, he has drunk too much for the night, has enjoyed all kinds of drinks mixed together and wakes up with an evil drunkenness, and then everyone will be worse off, so let him sleep forever.

Sometimes it was as if we could influence the world, that we had a voice, or a lot of voices, but no matter what man did, no matter what sacred height he ascended to in the service of his neighbor, he still would not change the sound of the sad world music, for this great man would never even understand what was really happening to him. That's why he looked at that star? That's why he cratered behind his ears? That's why he closed his eyes?

Chapter 25 - The Hunter

Standing on my four legs, I, a Lion from the tribe of Judah, listened to the sounds of the desert. It was morning and I wanted to satisfy my hunger. My ears tried to pick up every rustle and squeak.

That night I had slept, curled up like a tangle, in a sheltered place, at the foot of a mountain range that sloped deep down to a river, there were more trees and loot there, but also more people, and from him no danger, even if I come to kill each of them with a blow of my paw. At night I sometimes sleep so softly to their houses that the guard dogs did not notice me, and then sniffed the maddening scent of food.

I didn't know how people got their food, if they didn't hunt, and I came to the conclusion that they ate each other, according to some formula, probably eating the sick and weak in the first place.

I was the most important animal in the environment.

I walked slowly away from the rocks to a clearing and heard a lizard moving under a layer of dry grass, hoof it immediately and pressed it to the ground with a boot, it jerked free and fled, however, with two jumps I had caught the lizard beer and bit its head off. Then I had him all over. That, of course, was too little for a full stomach. The day lay ahead of me, and to survive it I would irrevocably need new strength, which I got from the living creatures that were eaten me.

My head was full of all kinds of knowledge of the world. Sometimes I even thought I understood why people existed, but I could not focus on that thought. I found people repulsive. But their voices annoyed me even more, when they shouted something to each other or to their God, in which these sounds embodied complacency and death.

Sometimes I would lie under a lone tree at the edge of a steep rock, my front paws outstretched and waving my tail, I would peer out into the desert and see the dark clouds, like accumulations of thousands of mosquitoes, moving Paul above the earth through the hot air. They were words, secreted by humans. They made a noise like that of a swarm of wasps. Sometimes I tried to figure them out and catch them, but it was impossible.

I slowly descended the mountainside to the stream, where green bushes could be seen, there I could catch a mouse or an unsuspecting bird.

I step across the open plain; if something happened, I had nowhere to hide, but a Lion did not feel the need to do so, where he was the undivided ruler.

I felt my own strength, but an ancient instinct nevertheless whispered to me that I should be on my guard, and so I remained standing from time to time, looking around intently and sniffing. The most unpleasant thing I could smell was the smoke of nomad fires, then the scent of another Leon, if it had entered my territory. But I understand that earlier that day no rival had entered my part of the desert and had not left his scent, and what had happened before that had no meaning in our memoryless world since in each lived not merely by the day, but by the moment when he could either become victor, or victim.

My eye caught a hefty, appetizing spider, I shot at it, but it managed to quickly enter a crevice. A little further on I heard rustling behind a stone, storming towards it. It was a jumping mouse, but it also managed to dive into its burrow in time. I took out my nails and stuck my paw into the burrow, but it was too well and too deep, and the jumping mouse made it out alive. That worked up a bit of my annoyance, a stupid jumping mouse not understanding that he was more useful when I, a big and beautiful wild animal, the ruler of these regions, was eating him. And he hid in his useless opening.

After this I walked cautiously, because a little to the left, on the other side of the small gorge, people often appeared, lighting fires and setting up tents of goatskins. There a black stone the size of the crown of a small tree waits. In doing so, those people were dealing with their big boss. The stone helped them. Sometimes, hidden among the rocks, I would watch as the people knelt before the black stone, uttered something and then chipped off pieces of it and took it away. Dark masses of words circled around the stone, but people did not see it.

I looked cautiously around the corner of the rock: at the moment there was no one at the stone, it towered above a large crowd of ordinary stones, which without the humans had been played with any power.

Probably once, during a storm, he had rolled down the mountain and stayed like this, pondering whether to drop all the way down or stay here.

Its top was finished by bird droppings.

I struggled through the dry, thorny bushes, then walked with inaudible gait through a wild reed bed, hoping to suddenly find prey at the water's edge, but there was nothing, just the tracks, in the clay near the water, of a wild goat buck, and there were a few gray feathers that a bird had probably lost while cleaning its beak. I smelled the feathers.

Right beside me the transparent water murmured over the stones. I never drank water or bathed in the stream like some animals did, even the thought of lowering my boat into the water put me off, it was as if I would be instantly wet through and all my strength and skill would be obliterated.

I heard a soft rumor, lifted my head and saw a living dark cloud hovering over the opposite high bank. It was rapidly changing contours, these backward and sideways, only a small part of it remaining that already looked so:

NI'X

I knew immediately what it meant: the cloud warned me that there was an enemy there. I could have fled, but did not, for I was a mature Lion, a ruler, and I had to prove that to myself, to the inhabitants of the desert, the living word cloud and my as yet unseen enemy.

I was not afraid of him because I was not afraid of death. And I was not afraid of death because I never divided the world into living and inanimate objects, that is, I saw no particular difference between a snake and a stick, a stone and a bird, between a dead and a living human being. If you wanted to show guts you didn't have to recognize in your mind the strength of the opponent, and if he remained dead just an innocent part of the landscape, victory was yours.

The dark cloud above the other bank of the stream, where someone else's territory began, the territory of another apprentice, whom I had never met, but from the scent trails he had laid out, I knew of his existence. Guts and curiosity won out over caution, I leaped across the Brook, seeing my long, muscular body reflected in the water for a moment, and I ran up the steep clay bank, trying to get to know my enemy as quickly as possible.

It was a big beat. Brown, with black spots. He was waiting for me in an open, flat spot, like a small arena. He had long understood that I was nearby and could have hidden, crawled into a dark crevice, but also found such a flight beneath the dignity of his life experience. The snake watched haughtily as I approached.

He made a lightning fast attack, four up a cloud of dust in the process, but was still too far away to reach me. I shot aside and sat down next to a small rock, which I could jump onto in case of an emergency. I pretended the snake didn't interest me and lay down at my leisure to lick my paw. The snake also kept dead still, not letting me out of its sight. A few minutes passed, the snake could no longer contain itself and slowly crawled away to the pile of stones behind it, between which it could feel safe. But I would not let the snake escape. In three jumps I was around the heap and had closed the way to the rescue starting stones. The snake pretended to crawl down to the creek, but suddenly it jumped at me again, Anne this time I could only just turn away.

The danger only inflamed me, and I ran around the snake, at times getting closer and then jumping back again, when I understood that at any moment he might renew the attack. I could move easily, but in order not to lose sight of me, at some point he had to either move his whole, long body, which was not very convenient, or twist his head, and if the snake chose the latter, the moment he turned away I got the chance to strike something under his head with my paw and jump backwards again. I felt something of drunkenness as my sharp nails darted into his skin, without otherwise doing any serious damage. But I did so successfully time after time, and the snake became angry, began to lose his patience, and this feeding prevented him from concentrating and placing the only proper attack. The amount of venom in his white teeth could have ended badly for me.

During our juxtaposition, which did treasure something of a plan, the snake's body took the form of several menacing letters. We exchanged signs, in deadly conversation.

When I had dodged a bite for the umpteenth time in one of his outbursts, but he had not yet had a chance to take it here his defensive position in the form of the letter 𐡎 I waited for the right moment, approached, grabbed him by the throat and pressed his jaws together as hard as possible. His hiss sounded at my left ear, he squirmed like one possessed, but I placed my paws as wide apart as possible to avoid falling and waited until he was at the end of his strength. I had to wait a long time, but finally the snake suddenly slackened. I let go of its jaws, shaking my head at the same time, to throw the snake off me, and jumped in the other direction, because it could have held itself dead. But the snake was dead, its fat brown body lying motionless. And appetizing.

I plunged into my hay and began to devour it, growling, my maw smeared with blood and entrails in the process. At that moment I felt the power of my lineage, thousands of my ancestors roared in me, I was the personification of their endless victories, their endurance and wit. They could not talk to God, as humans, but their ferocious fury was better than any prayer. I wanted to emit a victorious roar, but instead a hoarse hiss came from my maw, as if it were the spirit of the slain serpent that began to speak within me. I thought that my quiet and largely solitary lifestyle had made me forget to roar as befitted a Lion.

Of the snake only the head was left. Its eyes were half closed, its mouth with the hideous teeth was rigidly clamped together, before its death it had set its teeth desperately into the void.

I returned to my own territory, jumped over the stream once more, but this time I miscalculated and landed in the water with my hind legs and my state. Once on shore, I looked at my tail, which was soaked and looked pitiful.

Along the mountainside I walked up to the plateau. I was so full of the snake that I had trouble walking. The duel had lasted a few hours that had seemed like minutes. The sun had made the desert so blisteringly hot by noon that the stones would change my paws if I stayed still or moved forward too slowly, so I gathered all my strength together and set out on a run.

There, further on, among the rocks, was a secret God hidden from the eyes of outsiders therein I decided to sleep a little and digest food. I had triumphed, victory over the serpent had further assured me that the whole area was indeed my territory, my home, there I was free to kill, or to grant mercy, when I was satisfied and at rest. On the left, I noticed a burly scorpion in the sand, who stopped dead still, having smelled me. At another time I would have caught it and eaten it, having rejected its venomous angel beforehand with a lightning-quick move, but now my head was not on it. My recent victory was too important to be distracted by a scorpion. And this victory demanded some continuation. I decided to sleep out in the cave and at night, when it was cooler, I would go even further south, there beyond the hill began the territory of a lioness. The main thing was that she still knew who I was and was not in the company of another lion. I had not seen her for a long time, since the desert had bloomed for a few days after a rainstorm.

After a right turn, I approached the place where people hid their dead in stone Christians. I don't understand why people did that, after all, there were always wild animals or birds to be found that wanted to eat a dead body: jackals, ravens, vultures. Why put a body on the earth? Moreover, sometimes there were people who buried their dead and a few days later others came and dug it up again, to strip it of its clothes and decorations. Pathetic people, they were ashamed of their nakedness and were fond of dressing themselves with as many inedible valuables as possible, which had no net other than their shine.

Sometimes I saw groups of letters hanging above fresh graves. They united into words that man had used in his life. The sight of some words was so hideous that you not only had no desire to find out their meaning, but did not even want to look at them. This living cloud over a grave disappeared when all the words the deceased had used were listed. Usually the curses came last, the supplications, the accusations, the silly requests and the questions to the gods, then by the wind all came away, like chaff.

Once, over the grave of an old man, whom people held to be holy, for three days the word insignificant rang out

I walked around the killing field and already wanted to jump over a narrow if deep gorge of my own, to take behind it a path known only to me through the white hills, level and utterly deserted, but there was a westerly wind and on its hot air the smell of fresh meat reached me. That surprised me, and I stood still.

No meat was allowed in my territory, because there were to be no hunters other than me. Perhaps a four had brought his loot from somewhere in his paws to here? But then why was it fresh meat? Who had dared to do that?

I wanted to reach the cool cave, which I shared with bats, as soon as possible and put myself to sleep, but now it was necessary to find out what was happening on my domain, and so I turned west and ran, head weighted toward the ground, toward where the smell was coming from. I understood that I would have to make a loop, but that was inevitable, you had to lose North control of your own territory, you couldn't let anything run its course. If you put something in front of you, the enemy immediately took advantage of it.

Everything you had, challenged you and your territory. Guard those. Be extremely vigilant.

I stopped at a barren tree that rose from the ground like a giant bony paw, and sniffed again. The age of flesh had grown stronger. Long ago, even before I was born, a house had once stood on this spot, with a garden. Had a human lived here. With a family perhaps. Probably he had wanted to stay as far away from his peers as possible, and so was drawn into the desert. I understood him. I myself hated humans and lived alone. Maybe I could even feel sympathy for these people, with his dislike of other people, because then he was a real change.

Of the garden he had cultivated only this naked tree was left, which was so useless that in the middle of the day it did not even provide a shade yup therein you could hide from the sun. In this hermit's house had turned into a pile of gray stones, only a wall with a small window at the top remained. The smell of meat came from somewhere behind it.

I once walked closer to that new one and smelled that another one had joined that of flesh, but I couldn't pinpoint which one. And at that moment I get an itch in my balls.

Somewhere nearby the enemy could be waiting for me, I was not allowed to be distracted, but the itching became so intense that I no longer gave out, stay put, sat down, raised my hind leg to heaven, made my eyes blink, and with my rough tongue did begin to quietly lick my balls, growling with pleasure.

Probably a lion boasts an unusual sight at this occupation. What was a spotted hyena or an ichneumon thinking when he found the king of the desert in such an attitude?

So did they hate me even more than usual? Or did that actually bring us savages closer together in each other's eyes? I was curious if there was a being who loved me. Or could you only admire me, the ruler of the hot rocks, from afar, from a safe distance? The mice I usually conceive of probably didn't love me. The humans probably didn't either. Other lions? The lioness I decided to seek out tonight? You couldn't call her relations with me love, they just humbly agreed to become intimate with me, either out of fear or boredom.

I don't think love exists at all. There is only the desire to keep oneself free from fear and boredom, though some creatures are so stupid that they know no boredom, theirs remains only the tireless occupation (something like the eternal digging of dens) and fear. I know of the word ahava, coined by men because it often flashes up in the glowing hot air of the desert, belonging to no one and scaring away the birds. The letters Alef, Chet and Bet, of which it consists, disappeared each time and were replaced by other letters, and then you get something else, for example the word zahav, which indicated the metal for which the living people dug up the dead.

Licking my balls. Sometimes you were so absorbed in the process that it was as if life itself stopped when you stopped licking. I also possess the ability to ignite passions, I thought, all the while working with my tongue, the ability to turn into a compulsion, to be unapproachable and force people to perform strange actions (climbing a tree, for example, to run away from me), after all, my fur had a golden color for a reason, even if it had become a little sallow lately. I had gotten black streaks here and there, as if from the blows of God.

Suddenly rustling sounded really close, I shot up, on my four legs, but I saw the giant people too late. There were two of them, they dived up from behind the wall. The closest four nets out, I did a jump on him, but got tangled a moment later I was hanging in it, like in a bag.

'There we have him, the desert cat!' Said the man, who had just been holding. 'The little boss will be pleased. That's how she wants one, with stripes. Look how angry he is, Mordechai. And what ears! I didn't think we'd get him so easily.'

'I didn't doubt it, I told you he would absolutely come down on the meat,' the other man replied.

I made a hoarse sound and started floundering, trying desperately to free myself from the net, and they burst out laughing.

Chapter 26 - The drunkard

I woke up in the old fishing net that went between the two willows. My heart was pounding, as if I were running fast, because I had dreamed of how I had changed from a proud and free lion into a desert cat that had fallen into a trap. This was not pleasant, for a cat was an insignificant animal not even mentioned in the sacred books, while a lot of pigs had been given that here.

It was an hour before dawn when the bird-headed Tot released the sun from its beak, tired of having held her all night, in the sky above the eastern mountains bathed in a saffron yellow light.

I got up and sat down, trying to shake off the muddle of the dream, took a few deep breaths of the fresh outdoor air, stretched out my arms and pulled myself up to look at the lake's wrinkle-less, dark-gray expanse of water. The shore was deserted, not a sound came from the town. My students were sleeping in the barn.

Sometimes when you woke up you felt like an insane madman, disembarked in an unfamiliar port, having to get used to everything all over again.

I recalled my dream in my memory, yesterday's meeting with the nagids, and mused that the word "love" I had dreamt amidst the other special words had the numerical value "13. In the form of the Indian numeral 13, it resembled the high priest Caiaphas, I thought with a yawn. I did dream of him a lot these days, in all sorts of hypostases. So did Caiaphas equate to love?

I always went to bed reluctantly. Self-baked, a person had only weak control over the flow of his own thoughts, but in sleep he simply became a plaything in the clutches of evil chimeras. For me, sinking into sleep was the price of being able to make a single independent decision; you only had to fall asleep or immediately the Calydonian boar began to play into me with tiresome visions and force me to solve painful riddles. Or you suddenly ended up on top of an iceberg, in the middle of a darkness from the front yard out, forced to shiver in the cold to create a new world out of your own doubts and a handful of letters.

Therefore, I was particularly glad of the quiet morning moments therein separating a whole day from a new sinking into the abyss of night, unencumbered by great cares. The hours of the day were a respite from yet another descent into a turbulent darkness that was probably worse than death, for death meant before all else, carefreeness.

I closed my eyes again and thought that hand in my net about where I would fill the day with me. Recently, the boss of a paint factory had asked me to lunch, and I thought I might look him up. He must have had some kind of ailment. Well, I will help him, I decided, but I also have a good meal; I don't take my apprentices and paints because modestly, I don't have to charge him for his generosity.

All along the lake everything came alive. Women with bare legs and sun-tanned faces had been grinding flour and baking the morning bread, and the smell that came to me from it testified that everything was fine, everything as always, no hunger, disease or war. The richly scaled people of Galilee went to work: one built a boat, another salted fish or modeled a bowl, a third made fire in his smithy. I was always in awe of blacksmiths, after all, these priests of the manly Demiurge were engaged in something magical, they purified and tamed the metal that owed no one anything left to work for man.

The day passed, the salted fish was put into barrels and sent to Tarichaea, the town nearby, with the largest market in the area (the salted fish from this lake enjoys one from far beyond the borders of Galilee), the metal would serve the people obediently, in the form of jewelry, instruments and weapons, and who did, I thought, perhaps the artisan just today made the tip of the lens that would be put under my ribs by order of the clergy....

Many men began his day with prayer. The Jews prayed only to God because he had created him as Jews, the Romans and the Hellenes to the gods who had made him happy, while a few, on such a beautiful morning, probably performed a sacred ritual devised long ago and emasculated themselves in honor of Astaroth, with his full-moon face and horns, in order to have the opportunity not to be distracted by the love need of the body and to drink in the heavenly milk the wisdom from her nipples.

It was getting light. The shepherds were hunting. Many to the pastures, and you could hear the tanning of cows. Donkeys stretched their necks and showed their teeth, welcoming the new day, roosters huddled on roofs and fences to raise their morning psalm.

For some, however, the day began with ugly thoughts, black hatred and insatiable sorrow, and the truth was right with these people, who could not be enchanted by anything.

The stars disappeared, the sky of the east was intersected by yellow streaks, the sun appeared, and I watched a small elegant ship under sail across the lake ahead. Not resembling the ferryman's vessel or a fishing boat, it obviously belonged to a wealthy man. I discerned two warriors on board, a red stripe on the mainsail, and understood that it was a vessel belonging to Moshe Stira, a stinking rich merchant from Tiberias, known for having a whole flotilla of different vessels built with which he liked to shuttle back and forth across the lake. Moshe owed his nickname to the scar across his face that he had once suffered in the desert in a scuffle with robber folk.

The warriors on board were his bodyguards, at least the rationale for that is unclear, you didn't have pirates on the Sea of Galilee. From whom were they to protect their master?

Stira probably assumed that those warriors would take the leviathan's tentacles off if the monster wanted to chew up its pleasure boat, I thought. Maybe it would. But if the danger came not from below, not from the side, but from above, from God, no one would come to Stira's defense.

I felt the envy in me, because, I must confess, I also wanted to go out on the lake one morning in my own boat and carefree sip a glass of sweet wine, brought to me by a young mistress, and watch the green shoreline clothed along, burned by poor loons.

There was only one thing wrong with envy, it tormented the mind, but often it was also very useful, because it gave a person a lofty goal to achieve by cheering him up.

Tiberias was a city of boys there educated young people went to, you could easily make a fortune in trade or get a high position at the court of Herod Antipa, if your far snow and beyond was bad. The white stone houses of Tiberias had been built on the site of Jewish tombs, many teachers and law scholars had condemned it, but the Hellenes, on the other hand, immediately realized that it was a favorable place and flocked en masse. Clean streets, an amphitheater, legions of merchants with caravans from all over the world.

There were a few synagogues and, most importantly, a library, built by the scribe Issachar, Antipa's friend, from the king's money. If I had had the means and the opportunity to settle there, in the capital of Galilee, I would have done so irrevocably. Tiberias was the city of the future. But I had better not show up where the king lived who had had John put to death.

Judas came out of the barn sleepily, did a pee by the tree and waved when he saw me. A moment later Simon and Matthias woke up. Andreas and Philippus were not back yet; they were still wandering around somewhere.

We ate something, we had flat barley bread and eggs, while Simon went to town quickly to ask for a jug of sour wine on the spigot in a store. Nobody sifted the wine, bits of spunk crunched between your teeth, but it does get you drunk, and I suddenly felt so good that for a few blessed moments I experienced a true spiritual sobriety, realizing that I was lucky to be alive, healthy and a free man. The lakeside barn seemed to me a dwelling incomparably better than a royal residence, for life in a palace was incompatible with tranquility, that was the way people were. Even Albert, you the most righteous ruler, people would seek to kill you just because the crown happened to be on your head... Yes, I suddenly felt supreme, and in my pupils I saw the best servants in the world, because they did not visit to kill me to take my place.

They thought I was special and they were right, I would never become a will-less man of the crowd, let alone of a group of believers, because every random mass, brought to one under the name of God, was responded to by a gob of words under the name of Kotet, whereas I was always in control of my own words, I took up the black debris of ancient texts and from them struck sparks of love!

To reconcile myself with all things I wanted to smoke if at that moment, but the kif was long gone, only the debt to Venedad remained.

Judas went out fishing with the local fishing people. Simon and Matthew went to earn something extra in town, at the slaughterhouse, whose owner took good care of us and paid for periodic help with copper and oil, while I was visited by a man from Goes-Halav who pretended to be a master shoemaker. He asked me to relieve him of his vinousness. He earned well, had apprentices and orders from substantial people, but he was drowning all his money and, in addition, had an evil drink. He came to me on the advice of his wife, who had tried in vain to fight his malady by cursing and protesting, until someone told her that a healer lived in Capernaum.

I explained to him that he should wait until the full moon, replace an eel with his own hands, dip it in a cup of wine, then drink it and bury that eel under a flowering oleander with the words lech ve kach et cha-tsimaon itcha. And further, I dry him to love his wife a little more intimately, when she was angry not in response also to ignite in wrath, but to calm her down, then a day together would be truly blessed.

At his farewell, he gifted me sandals of refined workmanship, made by himself, and a piece of silk for which Goes-Halav was traditionally famous.

Yes, I was happy to accept gifts from people I helped. I experienced a special feeling: it was as if I didn't deserve all those gifts, because I could easily do the healing, as if I were playing the healer, but sometimes it was really fun, and then suddenly I get gifts for that. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to prophesy and heal... I would have found some other simple means of not starving to death. Maybe I would have collected taxes as a tax collector. Or spoiled rich old Roman women in Bajach or something. Or organized cockfights, in the Town Square shouting things like, "Bet a lepto on the black rooster and you will receive a quodrant, and if you bet on the pied rooster, but no less than the full two quodrants, Aarschot you not, the pied go is smaller but three times as fierce!

But sometimes I stared at the darkness within myself and understood that if the stars and otherwise had melded, I could have become a Roman citizen, held a high status post and plotted intrigues, become corporations in gory dealings and reap hefty profits from proscriptions, trading in gladiators, death penalties, funerals and memorial games. No one was insured against that, there was no spice against fate if you were bright and enterprising.

I knew that the drunkard would heal, you could see it in his eyes, I had read the fear in them. He feared for his life, understood that he had to use his wits and bury those poles under that oleander. But people with too much courage were difficult to cure, often impossible even. Sometimes only fear, that strongest element of all, came to save someone, when it appeared to have dissolved in the crucible of his consciousness. One could reason so long and deeply sensibly about the harmful passions but still die of them, and if the terracotta dragon of fear therefore devoured the fat monkey of reasoning, over to life itself.

Yes, I had cured many drunks, but I never understood how you could be dumb drunk for weeks, because after all, that was only a bell act when you used it at the appropriate time. And if you ever wanted to get seriously drunk, you did have to first take a sip of oil mixed with the juice of betony, then you would stay clear-headed even until the end of the party.

There was another tried and true way to take away noxious thirst. You had to find the nest of an owl, take the eggs out of it, boil them and serve them to a drunkard. From then on, he hated alcoholic beverages and remained clear-headed until his death, because his urges had reached an equilibrium.

Around noon I decided to take a dip in the lake, intending to have lunch at the local dyers immediately afterwards. I threw off my clothes and paddled for a long time over the stony keep, watching the fish, but then I swam far away from the shore and from there I could even see Tiberias, an accumulation of white houses up the mountainside.

Chapter 27 - The Esseen

When I came out of the water after swimming, I was met on shore by a tall, Chrome-looking old man in such worn-out clothes that they seemed to have fused with him. From his braided horse, I immediately noticed that he was an Essene. His countenance was wrinkled and dark, but his pale blue eyes shone brightly, while his hair, despite his venerable age, showed not a speck of gray.

He was one of the oldest of the Essene community, which had been settled among the rocks west of the Dead Sea since time immemorial and had managed to transform a stretch of desert into a thriving garden, a microcosm in which orange, and lemon trees thrived, eucalyptus and the Persian lilac, and where an aqueduct peacefully babbled the water that one mechanical tools brought up from deep beginnings.

The Essenes would probably outlive us all, because they multiplied attic intercourse and they hated women, whom they saw as sources of evil: congregations were replenished for centuries with other people's children and lies receptive neophytes who went out into the desert to rid themselves of one illusion with another. They will spend centuries building dwelling houses, beautiful on the outside but hideous because of their hopelessness. They will sit therein waiting for their death, lighting new and new men with their grief and apathy again and again. The small town of praying ascetics that had existed for generations resembled a picturesque execution site, version with the flowers of the lifostroton. As unified people with unified thoughts, they stopped living even before they died. Even a ram who sees that one wants to stab him to death tramples his legs and barks, while the Essene receives the sword of asceticism with joy. I wonder who oversees them from above. Surely not the ancient Jewish God, for the Scriptures say, "Enjoy life with the woman whom you love both the days of your vain life, and whom God has given you under the sun for all the vain days of your life.

Of course, this law has long needed to be changed, because now, as we live in a new era, at the end of the fourth millennium from the creation of the world, it is laughable to limit oneself to one woman, which is hardly better than teetotalism. If we compare the development of spiritual teaching with the stages of men's maturation, Essenism is the lad who wants intimacy but is still ashamed of women.

It is said that John, the put to death priest of the murky waters of the Jordan, had also once been Essene ... While the righteous Essene Menachem foretold a young Herod would become a great king.

By the way, what I liked about the teaching of the Essenes was their disregard for the highest Jewish things, especially those of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Why does he come to me? After all, the Essenes are extremely closed, the outside world does not care, I thought, looking at the old man who bowed to me and said, "My name is Ochia, I am one of the 10 elders of our Essene brotherhood in Qumran. We heard that you, Jesus, are a wise teacher, that you reject falsehood and the laws that will also reject it and therefore we want to ask you for help... We have been struck by disaster. All means have been tried and nothing helps. Surely we can hardly ask the shameful sanhedrin for counsel.'

'I hear you gladly, my good Ochia,' I replied, feeling proud that even the stern Essenes, renouncing all earthly vanities, turned to me, sinner. Evidently only good rumors about me had reached the community of Qumran.

I suggested to Ochia that we talk while walking along the streets of Capernaum, and eat something at the same time. No sooner said than done. We bought some smokers in a store, some bread and fried fish wrapped in a palm leaf, walked to the synagogue and sat on the grass in the garden, under a eucalyptus tree. Ochia paid for the welcome, even though I didn't like it right away, out of politeness. He only had some bread and didn't drink sikera with it, but water from the aqueduct that ran to the synagogue. In the cared for garden was a good place to be, besides that I was drawn to the synagogue, I wanted my voice to grow stronger, to echo through the stone vaults, and for the people to listen to me. I wanted people to be on fire from my words, but by an invisible fire and therefore elusive and not reproachable. That fire did not scorch, but neither could you roast a leg of mutton in it. That fire illuminated the path to immortality, if it existed at all. But the Rabbi Avdon no longer allowed me into the synagogue, so I liked to at least sit nearby then, in the garden.

"We live contemplatively and silently in the valley of Qumran," the old man began his story. 'We are happy because we know that we will inherit eternal life by renouncing the world. You probably know that the brotherhood of the Essenes is numerous and that the South Gate of Jerusalem is called the Essene Gate, because the whole street in the holy city belongs to it. But the community of the Essenes is a special one, we grow fruit for sale, and like you we also heal people, anyone who turns to us. We know a great number of cures for various diseases. An experienced Essene Physician can even prepare medicine from a stone, if he finds the supplies and pulverizes them...'

'Tell a little more about that, old man,' I requested, because I knew little about stone treatment; the Essenes did not give away their secrets, and I was glad the old man was so communicative.

'The stones are collected taking into account the course of the stars, the age of man and his condition,' Ochia began his explanation. 'Of significant is the color of the stones, its shape, its dimensions and its degree of transparency, if the stone lets light through. We open the stone and warm it before use. For example, emerald, zircon and yellow topaz help make contact with the higher powers when the moon is waning, while with anthracite when the moon is waxing you can perform miracles by invoking the strongest spirits of the earth. And yellow veined jasper renews the blood and gives old people back their strength. There are many diseases, but also many stones. We take notes, we have books. You can come to us, Jesus, and we will let you know in full knowledge of this science.'

'No, I'm a bad hermit and a lazy prey,' I said, laughing. 'I have no desire to shut myself up with you in the desert. But if you would lend me your books... Anyway, you can't study everything, and I know so many beneficial methodologies and recipes by now that I probably wouldn't have the time to actually apply them all before the end of my life. And it also happens that people resist; for example, I wanted to find out a long time ago whether goat poop dissolved in oxycrat actually helped liver pain, but no one wanted to drink it. And what physicians can't achieve from dead snakes...! But Stijn is a complicated matter and I am in awe of your arts.'

'We know the secrets of the stones,' Ochia said with a modest smile, 'but even the very strongest stone is useless if you have not found the accompanying words. Every substance we use is only a pretext for treatment, the main gestation lies in the words. The Essene healer gives the sick person his medicine, but then takes him by the hand, immerses him in sleep and erases the disease from his consciousness, after which the body gets better. The physician removes the disease, as a superfluous word. We are happy because we live in harmony with nature and with each other. We know the names of angels, they are recorded in our books, with the salutation and verses attached. We do no harm to anyone, we do not use spoilers, we do not wear jewelry, and all things belong to everyone with us. But the calamity is this: every year, in the month of chesvan, when we are all fasting and praying for rain, the letter ק falls from heaven, killing one of our brothers. It falls right on the unfortunate one's head and he is instantly dead, the brother's head breaks like an egg, because it is a very heavy letter, made of a material similar to a deep blue metal that gives light in the dark. You cannot grasp it, it is hot, and so one of us grabs the cursed letter with long pliers and becomes it in a deep, dry stand of the well, on the beds of which now lie 67 such letters. At night a bright deep blue glow rises to the sky, and we anxiously await the month of chesvan, trying to guess we will be the next victim. We make use of astrology, the predictions on the basis of follower walls, study the constituent parts of our names, but nothing gives results, and if you can't calculate the future victim, you can't finish his death either. What to do?

No, I thought, this old Essene is no simple soul ... perhaps he lies about that letter falling from heaven, but it is indeed true that every year one of them dies a sudden death, I have even heard of it.

'Tell me, Ochia, how exactly do you fast, before the start of the rainy season?' I asked.

"In Lent, we eat almost no food. We are afflicted with our helplessness. We cry, but above all, we are silent," the old man replied. "We close the gates, and in those days none of us can enter the monastery. Sometimes the sick die before the gates, but we are implacable, because the love of God is the main thing, everything else is meaningless, and if we do not observe the commandments, we lose ourselves in being doomed. Once during Lent a rich youth named Johazar came to us, the lover of tetrach Avilineus Lisanus himself. He had rushed to us, but Paul arrived at the beginning of Lent. He was with a large retinue of sentries and servants. First he begged us, then he issued his threats, but we did not let him, even though we could probably have cured him. Sitting behind our stone walls we deadened in silence. Soon Joazar left and reportedly went blind. But why does God allow a deadly letter to fall down from heaven? And how to escape it?

As I listened to Ochia, I careened in pondering the fate of Joazar. Had the tetrarch disowned His blind love? Clean-shaven, eyeshadowed and blanketed, but blind? Or had this sad circumstance actually inflamed lust, as some members blindfolded each other during erotic play. Often it was teeth, hair and nails that hindered pleasure, was eyesight also superfluous in this matter? What good were your eyes if you were completely absorbed in your lover? Probably your body had to utterly renounce to finally grab lust by the tail. And I was also amazed at the obstinacy of the hermits of Qumran. They knew how to turn numbness into a weapon in the fight against levity, but their indifferent stubbornness was clearly against God, and the falling letter was a sign that I could read immediately, and I didn't understand why those Qumranians hadn't figured it out in all those 67 years.

'I'll explain what it's about right away, just walk behind me,' I said.

We stood up, and I took the old one to the southern wall of the synagogue, which was illuminated by the sun. On the way I touched a piece of charcoal from the path and with it wrote on white marble of the wall the word

קחש

'Ochia, read what you see,' I requested.

'Heavens,' the old man replied.

'And now imagine that it is now the month of chesvan, the time of the first rains. And hup, the letter comes falling from heaven and has killed someone,' I said, and I spit on that letter and missed it out. 'Now tell me, Ochia, what word is left?

Ochia fell silent and looked at the word in dismay,

חש

'That's what Our Lord July wanted us to know in all these 67 years!' Exclaimed me, as Ochia made a stop at the wall in fear. 'The letter kills, but the spirit creates life! But you Essenes had put the spirit in the can and sealed this can, you hid yourselves in the desert and dreamed of eternal life for yourselves alone. ''Speak!'' is the word addressed to everyone in Qumran. You said that you are not harming anyone, but by denying people their healing during your silent fasting, you are doing harm through inaction. Therefore, you should not remain silent! By remaining silent you are betraying God, if He exists and has not gone mad from having no one to talk to. And God is not a kind, beloved brother to you. He is strict. I waved my finger back and forth in front of Ochia's nose, and the star diviner's signet ring glittered on. 'If he is kind, simple people also stop being afraid of him and start biting each other's throats plumply in the streets, like hyenas gone mad. It is only good for a sensible man if God is like a caring servant, but there are catastrophically few sensible people: a wild goose can fly over Palestine for a whole day without seeing one sensible man down there. You have secluded yourselves there, in the desert, to save yourselves, thinking only of yourselves, and in so doing you have angered our Lord. Why is the cheese burning when you have covered it with a bowl? Smash that accursed bowl! Let the candle illuminate the secret corners of the earth! And do not keep silent during the fast, when you can heal people with the word.

Ochia looked dismayed, alternately at me and at the black letters on the wall.

"You have solved the riddle that has tormented us for so many years. Jesus, in your words, is like the balm of Gilead to my soul! Said he. 'I only now understand that we Essenes are like the snake biting its tail ... I have understood ... But now I must convince my brothers of that. We Essenes of Qumran must announce our footsteps to the world to burn up in the fire of the world in honor of the Most High! He suddenly began to cry, and his institution's braided beard began to shake.

'The numerical meaning of the letter Kof = 100,' I continued, 'and that means when 67 letters have fallen, really 33 are left, that is 33 lives of your brothers. Do you want that reason? Open your mouths and assist the sick, even in times of the strict fast. You don't need to increase the grief with silence, who will benefit? Bring light into the world without silence, and our Jewish God, who watches over you, will be satisfied. These like birds floating farther on the waves of the elements of this world! Do not be like the serpent who uses his tongue only to scan the dead stones with it...'

I knew best, of course, that he would not be able to change his community's mind. The old man had seen the light, but I understood that in all probability his grievous brethren would subject him to a carefully devised punishment, they could, and in the worst case expel him from the brotherhood afterwards high would soon end his days, expected by the Essenes, and misunderstood by everyone else. But how amazing it was that his mind had not withered, that he had listened to me! That was a miracle! The old man who had seen two black words on a white background and had been born again. But I could not have acted differently and concealed the truth from a neighbor, because more or less the same thing awaited us all at the end of time, only in a different degree of horror, and then was it not wiser to be a little harsh, but golden?

We walked out of the garden into a small marketplace. It was scorching hot, and under the awnings sat only some Arab traders offering their wares: spices, cheap jewelry, amber, Indian people, fine message leather and woolen fabrics. In the dust lay, legs pulled up under them, their red-brown, charging camels of a stout and indefatigable sort, who had brought all that through the sands and mountains of Chidzjas over the caravan routes along the sea of Eritrea. These camels were also for sale. The remaining merchants in the store owners waited in the coolness of their stone houses for the adventure, to begin their trade when the heat subsided and the square bustled to life.

I suggested to Ochia that he spend the night in the barn by the lake, to rest and sleep a little before the return journey after the shores of the dead sea, but he replied that he should not allow himself to be idle and should return immediately to his brothers, to tell them of his meeting with me and of the solved riddle of the letter that sowed death and destruction. He made a bow to me, touched the earth with his hand and walked out of the street without looking back.

Yes, the Essenes ARE as ineradicable as the suffering of the world is inexhaustible. The ages will pass, but they will go before to settle in cities and spots, building their monasteries and spreading their teachings that destroy youth, reason, love and beauty for the sake of an unattainable goal, while God will sometimes weep for him, then laugh at them again, then destroy him in anger with the help of the alphabet.

Absorbed in these thoughts, I watched the old Esseen, until the grinding of the wheels of the small days of urban water transport called me back to reality.

That evening I told my disciples at the dis of those who had come to me during the day. Matthew took out his writing utensils and a piece of leather and, as usual, wrote down on them his muddled thoughts more which he edited out for my actions.

The silk fabric of the drunkard from Goes-Halav I donated to Judas, who was very happy with it.

Andreas and Philip once complained that they had been insulted in Bethsaid by a well-to-do man. The day before they had come to his house to preach sensible liberty, he expressed his interest in this, but when they recalled my name and added for a bite to eat, he became diabolical and ordered his huge black servant to "throw these jerks out the door" and shouted, "I swear that I will personally cover with gold the pillory for this accursed Jesus, who offers his own daughter for sale!

The black had executed the command eagerly.

It turns out that a few days before, Bethsaid had indeed been put on by yet another vagabond Bass who had impersonated me, with in his side a young virgin, his daughter, with whom he not only accosted as with his wife, but whom he also offered anyone who wished to confess her in the adjacent bushes for a small payment.

A number of men took up the offer, among them even a boy who had stolen money from his parents for this purpose. The good fathers of that city immediately reported the event to the Roman chancellery, and the Centurion, vested with the administration of Bethsaid, determined to take the vagabond into custody. He was so indignant at the barbaric amusement of the Jews in this city entrusted to him that he put on his sumptuous battle helmet with the silver-plated crest and set out, in company with some legionnaires, to arrest the vagabond, but the latter had meanwhile managed to escape, taking his daughter with him. Someone said that they had sailed away in a stolen boat, someone else that they had walked through the vineyards to the west, but all they had left behind was something that was once again a stone Bert in the crown of my evil fame.

By the way, I was not angry with the vagabond, he was trying to keep his head above water under the emaciated skies of Israel, and his dealings with his daughter were, in the light of the faith of our fathers, worth nothing but a reverent silence, because the righteous Noah himself, chosen by God to preserve life on earth, had indulged in the charms of his daughters. His example was followed by the pious Lot, who was already an old man with a gray beard when he fled from Sigor, in order not to have to share his two beautiful daughters with anyone, living with them in a deserted valley and having fellowship with them, by day on the hot stones between the thickets of box tree and flowering oleander, by night in the coolness of a cave. The three of them had a fine time together. Every Moabite and Ammonite will agree with me.

The very wise fathers of Noah and Lot knew what they were doing, and they just didn't trade their daughters, because after the flood the former had no one to whom he could offer them, and the latter was wealthy and lacked nothing.

Chapter 28 - Chorazin

If the comedy continues like this, another temple will be dedicated to me after my death. What do you do about it, then people deserve it. I don't need a big temple. Rather one, of marble from Carrara, in the form of a hexagonal tower somewhere on the steep slope of a mountain and in such a way that from the steps of the entrance down you can see a turquoise sea. The floor may consist of a mosaic depicting gods, semaphores, naked nymphs and rabbits of Olympus, within the center, me, in the guise of a white lion. It is desirable that blue and green tones predominate in the mosaic. Tall, narrow windows. The entrance from the south side, with above it, between two pillars, a golden wreath, decorated with all kinds of fruits of the land: bunches of grapes, ears of corn, dates, olives Phoenician apples. To depict them, stones of a corresponding color should be used: ruby, emerald, onyx, amber and rock crystal. The staircase to the entrance is a serpentine with yellow and black veins.

Late ivy is carved on the pillars, encircled by thorny branches and a vine with bunches of grapes.

An altar is not necessary.

Come to me, laden with your calamity, your fear, your bile, your stupidity and lack of education, your half-hearted admiration, I will but each of you listen! No one ever comes to me late. And if anyone comes in the evening and he is terrified of descending again in the dark along the stony path along the precipice to the valley, let this man ask the sentry for a reed mat and put himself to sleep on the floor of the temple, I will bless him with a light sleep. But before finding oblivion on his wicker mat, this pilgrim must light a candle or a lamp, dig up oil, bread and wine from his knapsack and have a small meal. I will share the dish with him, even if he does not see it, but perhaps he will feel the presence of my spirit. Let him drink wine and sing a song, sad or joyful, under the vaults of the temple. Or play a beautiful melody on a flute of deer bone. And when it is a new moon, let him blow the horn!

But if the purposeful traveler under the vaults of my temple minnows a youth or a girl, as lusty as they are lithe, then their groans will be the best, most vivifying music for me, and a fragrant light will shine down on gen.

The time will come when I will speak to the living in the language of the dead, and everyone will understand me. The river of fire that goes out from under the throne of glory will cool, I will open the door of the seven wards of Avadon, the mountains of darkness will give way, and from there, at last, like the turtles of Passover, the souls of sinners will flutter up, because it is long past time to put an end to it. 'The cloud dissolves and vanishes; thus the descended shall not enter into outer darkness,' said Job, blinded by his zeal to please his clubbing God at all costs, but we shall see: when the wind turns, the cloud will turn into a blue-black thundercloud, a giant hematoma, from which a red rain erupts, and every dishonorable and lawless one will try to catch the life-giving droplets with his scorched mouth. I let it thirst with myself.

No, none of that makes any sense.

I thought about that as I walked with my disciples from Capernaum to Chorazin, then Matthew had found a new berth for us, in the house of two good sisters. They were old spinster sisters who lived at the expense of a large land asset they had inherited. They owned orchards, arable land, where the great winter wheat grew for which Chorazin is famous, as well as several mills. A crowd of day laborers from the surrounding spots worked for the sisters.

Matthew had skillfully edited him, regurgitated a lot of strong stories about me and our company, and they thirsted to see Jesus, the wandering teacher from Nazareth.

We walked almost without a pack because they had almost nothing. I was glad to leave the barn in which I had spent so much time. It had been sad to spend the rest of my life in our barn. We left town quietly, without saying a word to anyone, and I assumed that for some time I would be immune from all the poor sick people who had visited me in Capernaum.

Pity the healthy and rich do not need a doctor, dealing with him would have been more cheerful and beneficial.

On the eve of our departure, Venedad from Gergesa had sent one of his servants to me several times, asking me to pay the 10 staters, and by leaving Capernaum behind us we disappear for a while from the sight of this money-grubber who did not hesitate to demand interest from me, from a Jew the same as him.

Besides, I reasoned, if my conversation with the nagids had not convinced him of my innocence, and the holy court wanted to have me taken into custody, then the spiritual authorities would also search for me all first in Capernaum. No, Chorazin was not far away, only two days away, but it could be my salvation, since the rumors often go out for those who claim the right to execute the judgment of God, I could have time to flee.

Across the road a woman on a donkey approached us. She was sitting with her legs to one side and not even looking at us. As with many Jewesses, her timidity was learned, like a dog's place. Such behavior always annoyed me, from women who were ashamed to cast a glance at someone they didn't know. They lived wordlessly and silently, perhaps only dreaming of a new dress or a silver ring ... but what was the use of such a life? They bore endless children, like kittens, and thought that this will help them acquire eternity, but nothing at all, that is one of the better illusions, seeing your children as the continuation of yourself, because after all, no one has yet managed to move with his soul to his child's body, then to his grandchild's and so on. The hermits of Qumran rightly mined that by multiplying the flesh we only multiply grief, but their irrational seriousness did not permit them to enjoy women. Looking at this Jewess, I suddenly understood that donkeys will one day become mechanical. Made of metal, they would no longer need food and would be stubborn, but the women, ashamed to see their legs wide, would still not sit straddling them.

Amazing! A gleaming bronze-colored donkey, capable of carrying a huge load... I shared these thoughts with my disciples, but they were silent, contemplating that I had said something insane. Judas looked at me worriedly, trying to figure out if I had not overheated in the blazing afternoon sun. But reality is always more incomprehensible than our wildest expectations, which is why one day not only the donkeys will be mechanized, but also the people. After all, that's the best way to get warriors who don't fear death and don't demand salaries. The only question is how to equip them with intelligence. That question is no less interesting than the methodology for taming dragons, in the treatise of Aristej the ''Ancient On Spatial Places.'' Yes, with thought equipped many-headed monsters you come to tame and with the help of rituals and willpower force them to serve you, you could even paint them over from green and red and vice versa, but they were traditionally incapable of thought, and how did you blow reason into the heads of metal warriors? Clearly, such required human sacrifice....

The sisters from Chorazin received us warmly. With their reddishness, cheerfulness and good-heartedness, and pleasantly plump, they were with old bags of new wagon still fermenting, which was wonderful. Both were approaching 50, but they had retained a curious freshness, perhaps because the erotic fire they embodied had allowed them to warm men up until then, although they had often been allowed to greet guests: prophets, itinerant sages and healers. The sedate, carefree life did not give them all the time they needed to seek the truth.

The oldest was named Gita, the youngest Tali.

The heavy shutters on the windows of their beautiful home were a godsend against the heat.

Made of stone, with its upper floor, its outbuildings, it was one of the best houses in Chorazin, even though it was at the very edge of town, immediately south of it stretched the huge, well-tended olive grove that belonged to the sisters. Such a lying down of the house pleased me, especially because in case of need you could easily escape through the orchard and hide among the surrounding hills, after all, I still did not know what the clergy had decided after the meeting in the synagogue of Capernaum. At any moment I come to have shield guards on my roof.

In the cool cellars of the house were stored a large quantity of eaters' wares: stocks of flour, cheese, sausages, wine and other things.

Gita was not as affable as her younger sister, but I liked her better. So as not to be too naive and jealous of the younger one, I did not express that feeling and got along equally well with both virgins, at least for the first time.

The sisters allowed us to take up residence on the upper floor. One room, with a large window on the orchard, Judas and I took; the other was for the other students.

There was staff in the house. The rich sisters offered us the chance to live on dignified terms. But in return I spoiled him every day with conversation and cheerfulness and also as much as I could.

My students stayed close to me those days, because in that wonderful house they found everything they needed and did not have to wander through the surrounding spots in search of an accidental piece of bread. Every evening in the large room on the first floor, I set up an elaborate dish. The servants would lie down and give us our eating utensils, set out all the delicacies on a rug, and the room would turn into a residence in which everyone would listen to me reverently, where, seated under the copper candlestick in the shape of a satyr's head, I would tell them histories from Scripture and clarify obscure places. Using words I give my disciples and our two hostesses on the wings of the prophets heavenward, I felt him through the ages: the lawgiver Moses had opened for us the sea, because we could leave the hated Egypt; before our eyes you said yes with the help of prayer killed several thousand Assyrians and made the shadow do as many as 10 steps backwards by submitting the sun same to his will; before our eyes an Ezekiel was stoned for his testimony of the coming of the Messiah...

The heavy oak door of the house was closed with an iron bolt, darkness reigned in the streets of Chorazin, but in the room with the whitewashed walls it was cozy: lamps were burning, on the painted dishes was delicious food, and the good old spinsters heaved their sighs as they listened to me, wiped away their tears as an offended levite with a knife cut his who sleeps into 12 pieces, and they waited as the donkey woman said in a human voice to the frenzied Bileam: 'What have I done wrong to you, that you beat me a third time?'

A service gets dry from the cellar, a two-handled barrel full of chilled wine from Phassos, I poured it into the cups and felt the happiest of symposiarchs. Although, unlike the Hellenic masters of drinking and eating, I never spoiled wine with water. You may only mix wine with old, thick wine, in order to improve the boy's taste.

We had butter, and bread of first-class flour, lamb, smoked fish, mature cheese and smoked olives; poultry, smothered in goat's milk. Oh, if the hearts of men had mastered the wisdom of the world as easily as their bodies, the food! Then there would have been no wickedness and misunderstanding, no envy and war, not even sainthood.

Gita fell in love with me. When she listened to my stories, she would look at me long and dreamy, with a slightly opened mouth, containing the strong white teeth of a young girl.

Thanks to us, the old spinsters were soon no longer virgins, but we could not redeem him from old age. Only death saves from old age. Such was the harmony of two women and six men, they had enough with us, and we were thickly satisfied with them.

But we had lit the fire they had been putting out in themselves for so long! They became real grubby beasts in bed, which was great.

It should be added that Gita had more freckles on cheeks and nose, that detail seems to me to be of eminent importance, for by number and placement of the stars one can find the way to the home, if it exists, and by the spotlights on the cord of a fiery, no longer so young woman, the way to momentary happiness. To my justification, I add that long-term happiness does not exist anyway. Or does it?

In the warm nights I bent over Gita, sinking my fingers into her full red hair and kissing her lips, touching her two magnificent incisors with the tip of my tongue, and then she rode me, like a Parthian cataphract, everything around her studded with the arrows of her passion. When my powers were at an end, she was indulged by my disciples, among whom was also Matthew, this old bag of shit hundreds likewise to the musky-haired female flesh. Sometimes, after a debauched night, I woke up in the arms of Tali (Her womb was just a little narrower, and she moaned just a little louder), and sometimes, in the arms of my own blood Judas. Philippus was the one who relished the least with the sisters, but that was understandable: we had once possessed the narrow hole of a young lad and always found a reason to stay out of the woman's trap. He often thought back to Jonah, his lover who had snuck out, and he cursed the Helleen with whom he had taken legs.

Chapter 29 - Demetrius

When people heard that I had moved from Capernaum to Chorazin, long lines came to me, from the sick, the handicapped and simply from people who were in need of comfort or good advice. Most often now I got people who asked me to administer justice in some matter, but I tried to avoid that role, so as not to offend the authorities, and I either referred him to the chief rabbi or to the chancery of the Roman garrison. There also came simple-minded people who simply stared at me with wide-eyed images and kissed my sandals.

I received people in one of the rooms on the first floor. That one had a wooden floor, and through the two windows plenty of light came in. In the corner was a fireplace with a flue. At my request, a table with a marble top was carried in, and on it I displayed bowls of all kinds of remedies, and my instruments, including new ones, specially forged to my design drawings, the work of the skillful blacksmith being paid for by our hostesses.

After consulting with my students, I started asking money for my treatments, mainly from well-to-do people. This enabled me to safeguard myself from people who simply wanted to have a chat with a well-known teacher, about something futile, for example, about whether to bake cakes in the shape of the ears of King Artaxerxes' lover at the Feast of Purim, thereby wasting not only my time, but theirs as well.

Moreover, we knew all too well how fragile any prosperity could be and wanted to set aside some silver money for the future.

Extracting a tooth and wound treatment with an infusion - 1 axis

Pulling a molar - 2 asses

Putting an arm back in its socket - 1 drachma

Splinting and fixing a broken arm - 2 drachmas

Having a comforting conversation with someone who was afraid of everything - 1 drachma

The prayer for a rich and sinful man -1 silver sickle

Curing a lunatic who ran from madness into the fire or water - 3 drachmas

Cleaning and cauterizing a festering wound - 3 drachmas

Blessing a pilgrimage to the Temple - 2 asses

Blessing a trade transaction - price by appointment

Treating male impotence - 3 drachms

Circumcising an infant - 5 asses

Predicting the death of a sick person to the nearest one year - 7 drachmas

Predicting the death of a sick person to the nearest six months - 10 drachmas

The seasoning against a snake bite - free

Exorcising evil spirits from a dwelling with incense - 4 drachmas

Removing a wart - 3 lepta

Bewitching a sagacious man - 15 drachmas

Bewitching an ordinary man - 5 drachmas

A leguminous lion gall (For the ritual of weakening the enemy) - 1 sickle

A piece of crockery with a drink against insomnia (wormwood, hops, mint) - 2 drachmas

Convulsions, shortness of breath, black disease, freedom from nightmares, rheumatism and colds... What a person gets for nothing has little value to him, the same goes for a method of treatment. I grabbed people's money and thus helped them feel the joy that health was for sale. For sale! Just now! Without waiting years for the free grace of a fickle God, as invalids and lepers did at the dome of Shiloach.

When hysterical women came to me for comfort, I often had intercourse with them in the treatment room, which was the best I could do for him. Sometimes they turned out to be virgins and I made them promise not to tell anyone about what happened, so I wouldn't have family members on my roof. Some came again. Others I scared them so they wouldn't run their mouths. There was nothing that curbed a woman's tongue like the fear of a curse.

Gita and Tali were jealous, but they couldn't do anything about it. Just as it was not in my power to heal everything and everyone, so it was not in the power of the sisters to have me all to themselves. By the way, as long as the relationships of a man and his wife have some imperfection or a trace of resentment, the games are both spicier and more colorful.

By the way, an effective remedy for those who could not conceive with any possibility, burning the word poerioet on a woman's belly. But of course, without intercourse, nothing came of it as well.

I started treating the mentally ill more often. Usually all they needed was attention, a kind, reassuring word. Many doctors (and not only among the Jews) try to cure their insane patients by locking them in dark rooms, tying them up, roasting them, getting them drunk with stubborn wine and making them listen to loud music, but that is stupid. And as useless as treatment through prayer to God, in whom you had long since ceased to believe.

Mental patients had to be encouraged to engage in mental activity, physical exercise and even making speeches.

I must confess that I enjoyed asking hefty sums from people who under normal circumstances were as backward as they were greedy. When I had listened to the abdominal complaints of such an innkeeper, I advised him to eat lamb's porridge in the morning, gave him a small piece of crockery with almond oil (take it in the morning at the same time as the porridge), and asked 5 shekels for it. His red fleshy face read: dirty swindler! And then, with a grin of indignation, he took five silver coins from his belt. Delightful to see!

But I didn't ask everyone for money, even though I did suffer from scraping, which I reproached myself for. If some poor slob arrived in a torn sindon with some ailment, of course I treated it free of charge.

All the illiterate, nit-picking, empty-headed folk filled my days with real illnesses and imagined phobias, and sometimes I did long for a conversation with a wise man. But like everywhere else, the people in Chorazin led sedate lives, and it was more useful to me to talk to the trees in the orchard than to them; at least olives and figs could not answer with stupidity. Of course, there lived in town a few families from the highest Roman circle, including the prefect and his wife, and they were educated people, but like the local clergy, they shunned dealing with me. With my students I never had a spiritual bond of trust, indeed, sometimes I noticed that they were ashamed of me, like children of their fathers, while I, what shall I conceal it, looked down on them a little and certainly did not see them as wise men at all.

Therefore, I was very happy when a learned man from Damascus came to me, named Demetrius. He indicated that he had lost the joy of life and that, having heard somewhere about a healer from Galilee, he had immediately set out on a journey. Demetrius shared an acquaintance with me and a cure for melancholy, and I was happy to convince myself once again that not only stupid suckers believed in me. He brought news from the capital of the province, but the main thing was that you could discuss questions of medicine with him, talk about philosophy and poetry.

I heard Demetrius explain in detail everything with which he was occupied. Once, when I was working in the library of Alexandria, I had at the same time received instruction in the handling of metals and other substances from one of the priests of Hermes, and therefore I was able to determine fairly quickly the cause of Demetrius's affliction, which was located in mercury poisoning, the metal with which he was experimenting in his workshops, trying to find a cheap way to properly gild tableware on the orders of a Roman Merchant. He had almost made xerion, a remedy for healing and transforming metals, but had suddenly lapsed into deep melancholy.

I explained to him that he had to get the mercury out of his body, only then would the drab sadness, like the waves of the North Sea, leave him.

'Then how do you do it, Jesus? Asked Demetrius.

"We know that in the world there are seven metals, and each of them corresponds to a wandering star, " I said. 'Mercury is guided by Kohav, who attracts ga in the morning and repels ga in the evening, therefore you must undress in a solitary height before sunrise, stand stark naked with your face to the east, look for the star Kohav in the sky and pronounce loudly: ''I return your gift to you!'' Then you must dance a flowing dance until dawn, offering your flanks, shoulders and behind to the light of this star, and fanning yourself with a bunch of branches from the flowering honeysuckle, which buds just in the month of ijara, when the pale face of Kohav is best seen. You should welcome the morning red in this way seven times, or else nine times, if after seven times you still do not feel joy of life.

I managed to inspire Demetrius, he brightened visibly as he imagined how he would return the star her heavy gift, finally step out of her shadow. I felt sorry for him because, after all, he had spent much of his life in a gloomy workshop, experimenting. I also told him that nasal drops of pheasant bile helped against melancholy and that you should take them simultaneously with the star's manifestations. Demetrius wrote down my advice on a piece of papyrus.

On parting, he said he would always be happy to receive us at his home in Damascus, and he explained how I could find him there. And he also presented me with a book written in Hellenic tongue containing the poems of Nikolaos of Damascus, titled The Seed of the Unicorn, which I absolutely loved. I knew that this man had been a historian and the teacher of Cleopatra of Selena, Queen of Kirenaika, but it turns out that he was also an impeccable poet whom I feel comfortable calling the sharper of refinement. These papyruses in their leather case with ribbon around them were a truly royal gift to me. Nikolaos of Damascus renounced in the book all the values of the world, to influence that same world against and unconstrained, but with authority.

I listened in my treatment room with eager interest to the news of people coming from Jerusalem. What orders had the prefect issued? What goods were now selling at a good price? What new prophets were making themselves known? What did you hear about my doubles? Has any of the clergy yet mentioned my name in a public appearance? In what acts of war hmm had really begun or ended in the countries around us? Had not one of the elders of the Sanhedrin died? Has another great new book been published? It occurred to me then that Israel was on the eve of events that would change her institution. And I wanted to have my part in that.

Chapter 30 - The fruit

A pregnant woman from Sepphoris came to me complaining of pain and blood loss. I examined her, questioned her, listened to the heart, felt her abdomen and understood that the child was in an incorrect position, outside the uterus. I had encountered something like this before and knew the woman could die. It was amazing that the fetus had drifted and continued to grow. The woman could only be saved by getting rid of it, and as soon as possible.

She said she had secretly left her home because her husband did not want her to go to me, dreaming of a son and heir as he did, and the local physicians from the ranks the Orthodox Jews advised her only to pray diligently for a successful delivery and to drink as much goat's milk as possible in the morning. The pain intensified. The wise woman had chosen the moment when her husband, master of a stonemason's workshop, was off to Caesarea on business, and had come to me.

I explained what awaited her and suggested she get rid of the fruit. She agreed without hesitation. It was at the sunny noon hour and I gave her an hour of preparation: she had to relieve her bowels and her bladder, shave off the hair on her venus mound and wash her lower body. I had to be ready before dusk; candles and lamps did not provide enough light for the operation.

I had Judas make a fire in the stove, and myself I prepared a sponge soaked with the milk white juice of the Sun Crown, and a copper pessary with a sharp incisor at the end. Simon lies above the tripod smelling aromatic resins with soothing herbs added.

The woman lay on the table, with her feet toward the window, toward the light. She was wild with fear. I gave her wine to drink, with the juice of the myrtle bush and pounded seeds of Bilze herb, so that the pain would be easier to bear. The perfect remedy for oblivion, of course, was a pair of Egyptian Lilies, eaten with stalk and all, but they did not turn green near Chorazin.

Andrew, Simon, Philip and Matthew Hilde the woman by arms and legs.

Judas held the pelvic spreader with both hands. I looked into the woman's abdomen, tried to pinpoint the location of the organs and of the child, as I remembered them from the drawings in a Greek Hans that Surgeon Aprim had shown me. I had to work in the blind, and at the same time quickly and carefully. The woman began to cry loudly, and Andreas caressed her belly with his hand, like a small child. She clenched her teeth and remained silent.

Using a long thin dan I inserted the sponge soaked with the poisonous juice of the Sun's Crown into her womb, at that the flight would change lies and was better to grasp with the pessary.

We had to wait a few minutes.

I heated the pessary in the fireplace and let it cool.

Then I brought out the sponge.

I was taking a risk. The woman could die, and then I would be accused of murder. Probably I would have managed to escape, as long as no one had heard of what had happened... But refusing the woman my help I will not. Galilee was teeming with healers who could pull a molar or haunt a fracture, but this complicated operation I could do alone. It was my close, written in fiery letters on the pet tables of my heart.

I had my pupils hold her as firmly as possible, dream in with the still warm pessary, grabbed the flight by the head and pulled it toward me. The woman began to scream. Matthew, who was holding her right leg, pulled away white and almost stroked the pennant.

"Hold on tight, old sucker!" I shouted, and that made him hum again. For a moment I considered what I would do: try to remove the flight all at once in its entirety, or in bits and pieces. The first method was preferable, but more complicated, the risk of bleeding greater. I decided to take my chances. While doing my best not to squeeze the handles of the pessary too hard, I pulled the fetus out, feeling how it barely resisted doing so perceptibly.

It was amazing that such a little girl could cling to life, when in fact it was dragging herself and the woman to death. No, there was no infant who would be able to sacrifice himself for his mother. Like the wild animal, only its own life counted, it had no other purpose, no pity or compassion, no guilt. And the recalcitrant shudder of his body was akin to the shudder of deliberate hatred, for the purpose of the one as well as the other was, the infliction of senseless evil.

I paid no attention to the woman's screams, but she was doing her best to get up from the table and I was bothered by her movements.

'Lie still!" I shouted. 'Death is waiting in this room until I make a wrong move with my hand! You are hindering me!'

She found within herself the strength to lie quietly, but did begin to scream even louder. By the way, I knew she could not be in too much pain. She screamed more from fear, from the awareness that her body was a plaything in the hands of six men, one of whom had taken on the role of doctor, without himself knowing who or what he really was.

I did not succeed in taking out the flight in its entirety, apparently due to the imperfect shape of the pessary, and I forcefully squeezed the handles together. The head detached itself, I pulled it out and tossed it into the month standing next to me, and then I neatly extracted the entire rest, cutting the flesh into pieces and happily admitting that the woman did not lose as much blood as she could have. The blood loss and the impossibility of stopping it, that was the most dangerous thing about such operations. I also feared a subsequent infection, but the woman was in perfect health and iron strength and would survive.

When the entire fruit was removed by my calculation, I took another look in her womb. This one was clean.

I knew the sweat from my brow. The whole world had changed a tiny bit in that moment, from the course with which it was flying toward the abyss.

The woman cried as she understood that she had been reborn. I was proud of the work I had done. She had not bled very much, so the important organs had not suffered, and if desired, the woman could conceive again, although I would not start that in her place.

I had come to terms with death and a miraculous rescue had occurred, of life for life's sake.

For two days the woman regained her strength, lay in the room of our good hostesses who cared for her as if she were their third sister.

She didn't even have a fever.

She offered me money, but I refused.

Then she made her way home, informing her husband and stonemason that the heir's appearance had been postponed.

On parting, she kissed my hands.

I strictly forbade my students to tell about the operation carried out, so as not to confuse the community of Chorazin and stick around a little longer in this colorful town on the hill where we had another big house. I had no desire to move again after a fish barn.

Publius Ovidius Naso takes that there is a cure for love, and he even advances ingenious prescriptions, but saving someone from the fruit of love cannot be done by one poet, here the hard hand of the physician is needed. And perhaps my saving this woman was not the only argument in favor of this operation, for even a man like Aristotle, as wise as a prophet, said that when husbands had children against the odds this flight should be expelled. He argued that the germ of a human being was identical to the germ of a plant, and what does it cost us to pull out a piece of weed?

There are other methods: you can make a woman carry heavy things, you can give her herbs that make her vomit or make sprinkles, but for now there was nothing better than the metal forceps, invented by the medics of Rome.

Chapter 31 - The blind man

Of course I don't come to heal everyone, and there were days when Chorazin became the arena of my impotence. What to do with a man whose one leg was shorter than the other? I advised him to wear a sandal with a thick sole on one foot. He had come from far away, from Gaza, had hoped for a miracle, that I would fix his leg, grow it using the mire of the earth, while I gave him succinct advice and led him back outside. Probably the chance of a miracle existed even in such a case, but then such a person had to have a great purpose in mind, just the desire to please the females of Gaza was not enough. Anyway, our love perils did not matter much to God, but that was just as well, because then he would also turn a blind eye to our successful love adventures. If we knew exactly how the Most High responded to this or that action of ours, we would perform his actions and let him govern us, and no one had succeeded in that yet, not even the greatest righteous. And those of him who had seen a hint of his insane harmony immediately lost my mind and could not make sense of it.

'Jesus don't come and help me! What kind of slavish offer is this from an impostor with the mask of a scribe!" cried the limp in the Chorazin market, after he had drunk away his sorrow, for the shoes of Gaza would still giggle at his lack.

Yes, you could mold out of the earth something of a human being, and make it propel itself with the help of the Logos, but you could not unite the earthly mud with the living flesh to grow an arm or a leg... Or rather, you could only do so if it pleased God to spit on a heap of dust of which you wanted to make something. The divine saliva reconciled all random substances, but how did you earn such a phlegm?

And how do I come to help someone who was blind from birth? He was brought to me by his elderly mother. He was a man of about 40, with a powerful physique, a huge red beard and a luxuriant head of hair. As I looked at him like this, I thought that this is what the powerhouse Samson must have looked like, the last great Richter of Israel.

The blind man made his living singing and playing the zither on holidays and commemorations, although it would have been more appropriate to see him holding a donkey chinbox.

'Make him see, grant me so long his sight!' the old woman pleaded, after kneeling down deftly in front of me. 'We've really tried all sorts of things... We've used ointments, applied the saliva of a large solid... My only hope is on you...!'

I groped the man's eye sockets, hoping that maybe with a blade of obsidian you could make cuts in the eyelids to open them, but he didn't even have eyeballs. He was not to be helped with anything. His inner gaze was forever focused on the apeiron.

'Do you sometimes want him to play for you, Jesus?" the old woman perked up. 'Then you will hear at once how marvelously he speaks, and then you will understand that he needs eyes irrevocably! The gracious Antipa is fond of music, makes my son-love cannot do without an accompanist, and who would want to admit me to the palace, an old ugly woman... Asher, play something for the teacher quickly!'

I wanted to object, but the blind man quickly took his zither out of his knapsack, sat down on the ground, with his legs folded under him, struck the strings, and in the process sang one of the songs that the women of Galilee sing when bringing in the harvest.

"We bring, dear heart, mountains of bread to the house!" thundered the bass of the blind, and the old woman would clasp her hands together on her chest and look at him with endearment.

When they heard music, Gita and Tali entered the room and began dancing and clapping their hands.

'...and Bergen bread!" ended the blind man.

'Ah, that's my favorite song!' Exclaimed Gita.

"Surely you can help this man, Jesus? Asked Tali.

'Probably not,' I replied exasperated, they shouldn't come and disturb me when I had consulting hours. I had already reproached the nurses several times for not coming to my work and just rebbing.

'Why not, Jesus?" the old woman asked. 'Asher has played so beautifully for you, and you want to deprive him of his sight? How much money should I give you? I don't mind, I'll do anything for my son...'

'Mama, I told you there was no point,' spoke the blind man, and he got up and stowed his instrument back in his knapsack.

'Woman, you have a son, that's the main thing, then be happy about that,' I said. 'If he could have seen, he would have been away from you a long time ago, to a virgin in a distant city, you can state. And then you would have been alone and you might have been dead already... You may be glad!'

But the old woman doesn't understand me.

'Perhaps the song did not please you? Will Asher Anders sing you a sad song...?'

I got her out the door with difficulty. Like the limp from Gaza, she walked down the street in Chorazin and gushed loudly "this false Jesus," while her blind son trudged resignedly behind her.

And then there was that legionnaire from the garrison, named Antony; he was suffering from an old wound that he had received some years before, a Jew had planted a knife in his abdomen during disturbances near Jerusalem, touching his life. The wound had healed, but the liver no longer worked properly, and from time to time the legionnaire was in tremendous pain. I advised him not to eat too much, especially not too fatty, to take a drink of seeds and fruits of carduus marianus every day, and to come back to me in a few months.

"Won't you make me better right now, Jesus?" he asked bewildered. 'I can no longer bear the night pain... And in the morning I feel so bad I can't get out of bed...'

'You are a Roman, Antony, and you have plenty of gods to turn to if you don't like the treatment I prescribe,' I replied. 'I'm very sorry that Jew stabbed you with that knife.'

'Not to worry, my mate killed him right away,' Antony chuckled, 'he stabbed his gladius to the hilt in his heart... and could you maybe sell me some kif too, Jesus? I like that medicine.'

'I stopped dealing in kif a long time ago, Antony,' I replied.

The legionnaire threw the two drachms on the table that came to me and returned to his garrison.

Sometimes rich elderly, landowners, merchants, officials, would come and ask me to give them back their youth. I remember one of them, the tetrarch's counselor in commercial matters. As ramshackle as he was busy and agile, dressed in a brown chiton with tassels on the sleeves and an expensive coat of pink silk, he was the personification of the lust for life. You could tell that the old man did not believe a jot that the gardens of Galilee would still bloom if he suddenly died. His soul resembled that of a carefree young woman, he wanted to please every flower and spend his not inconsiderable fortune for eternity, he coquetted with death, and his barren, brown-stained hands trembled as he said, "Jesus, you are a great teacher, therefore I will not waste your time needlessly. Let's get straight to the point: I do not feel myself an old man, therefore help me bring my body in line with my soul. I will reward you generously for it. An Arab magician told me that for that you need the blood of a young offspring... I can arrange that. I have 15 grandchildren... With the help of reliable people I can kidnap one of them, he is only two, they will bring him to you, and you will make use of his blood. He is as healthy as a fiddle.'

I refused it to the old man, but only because I did not know how to pour the blood from one human into another, and that was exactly what had to be done, that magician had not lied. Moreover, before pouring the blood over, it had to be put into a special piece of vessel and worked on using incantations that I did not know about. I had only heard that they existed. It seems that Indian medicine men understood this art.

Some people thought this kind of experiment was inhumane, but then I argue against it: even on the rusty and impure balance sheet of the Lord God, on which a greater weight indicates a greater usefulness, a bell-fed toddler will surely not weigh more heavily than a scrawny graybeard, the final sufferings and hardships of life will be more convincing. Every miracle, even a bloody miracle, is a gift of God, and who better to appreciate it than an old man! While children are almost always ungrateful. And our world is also such that in all likelihood the grandson will grow up and eventually warm his soulful grandfather on his deathbed for the inheritance. The belief in children is but a harmless belief, but the cult of the child, which is an unforgivable stupidity that turns a mature and sensible wallpaper into a victim.

It is against nature to be a victim.

Some old-timers I advised simply dyed their gray horse with henna so that it would turn reddish, or red. And if you wanted a black horse, you had to add blood and fat from a black bull to the henna, a raven egg and mashed tadpoles.

On one occasion someone came and declared that the land where he grew his gram had little water. And he looked at me expecting that I would promise him life-giving streams from the heavens that would regularly pour out over his land lest some of the moisture happen to land on the land of his neighbors, whom he hated and wanted dead as soon as possible. Yes, my unloving people were the best breeding ground for the proliferation of prophets great and small, because it was dead easy to become a saint in the midst of those people. A little irony, powers of observation and self-control sufficed.

When I think back to these and other instances, I understand that I was always a hostage of sacred survival, people expected from me what is written in the book of Neviim, I had to realize for them the province of Isaiah: "then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf be opened; then shall the banks leap up like a deer, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing; for in the desert shall the waters spring up, and in the steppe the streams.

Even if there are no medicines against death to be found in the gardens then, I have always been able to successfully help aging women who just wanted to slow down the process a little bit, not get their original youth huh. Here baths of fruit juices and this linen milk are irreplaceable, as well as ointments for hands and face, decoctions of certain herbs, physical exercise and prolonged sleep. A woman who sleeps little is more likely to wilt. Yes, and with a few of them I got into a relationship, which was also a fantastic medicine. Dyed-in-the-wool nuffs, Evert experienced as willing, pleased me greatly... Their moving and moaning were of an ultimate sincerity, as if the act of love was accomplished for the last time. I felt their gratitude, which set me on fire. As if everything such a woman could have experienced and gone through transferred onto my bed, and the pulsing currents of other people's lives allowed me to see the hidden for a moment.

I myself do not know how I had once healed lepers. Probably leprosy was after all a spiritual condition that one halt control groups when doctor and patient joined forces and understood each other, when their work turned into a mystery. That had happened when I had healed the leper Ephraim in Capernaum.

Often it was one's own numbness and unpolishedness that prevented a sick person from healing.

Sometimes at night I would walk out of the East Gate of Chorazin, sit on a rock at the edge of the precipice and look at the red peaks of the mountains above the lake. I thought about the people I hadn't been able to help. All together, they could probably fill a city. I wouldn't want to live in that city.

Chapter 32 - The fish

Occasionally I rested by myself in a little boat, bought from the money earned in Chorazin. Then I would take food and the books I could get my hands on, drop the anchor somewhere not far from shore, a round stone with a hole with a rope through it, and spend the whole day reading. That was the best diversion. From time to time someone appeared on the waterfront looking for me, but I paid no attention to that, and I told my students to tell everyone that the teacher had gone out to pray for our salvation.

The boat shelled on the waves, the wind rippled the linen cover that shielded me from the sun, the water sloshed, the birds squawked, and lying on a layer of straw I followed Virgil, Horace and Catullus to the worlds that only truly free and carefree men can create. And I was happy to read the meliamba of Kerkida Megapolis:

Once upon a time there lived in Syracuse

Two girls with two round buttocks.

I am sure that any verse that is devoid of didacticism and bombastic comparisons is a great achievement, for it requires a great deal of concentration of the mind. We must hand belong to the earth and bow to their author. Besides, to write unconstrained, a person did not have to belong to a distinguished lineage at all, for even the potter's son Rinfon could be poetically free:

I am no great nightingale of muses, yet from tragic jokes I was allowed to pluck a special ivy to wreath.

That day I lay lounging on the bottom of the little boat, and it occurred to me that the Sea of Galilee was a giant lens, like the curved emerald through which nearsighted Roman patricians watched what happened to me during gladiatorial fights in the arena, but I saw through it the poets of past and present who were trying to appeal to me and wanted to get their interrelationships clear, in their vying for my love and their attempts to attain perfection of thought and style. On one occasion Marcus Atilius began to read to me his comedy The Womanizer , but was interrupted by Apuleius, who said that it was more interesting for the teacher to hear from the golden ass. Probably he was making an allusion to the fact that I was as moreless and rampant as his protagonist Lucius. Marcus Atilius pushed Apuleius away, it became fighting, and both tumbled into the depths consisting of black "petroleum," lime and sulfur; suddenly sunlight streamed in through the lens, the matter flashed up and turned into halkolivan, a fiery mass of words whose secret had once been first revealed to me on a hill near Jericho.

It was a sparkling malleable space. I come to move freely in it, rising and rising several times into a dark red depth. For a while I amused myself with this, not feeling the weight of my own body, but then I noticed how around me human contours appeared, or rather, only the heads and torsos. They paid no attention to me and discussed something further from poetry. I did not know the language they spoke, but miraculously I understood it, even though the meaning of some expressions received me:

"The bishop was a good man, he never took anything too much," one of them said.

'Blessed memory,' replied a second.

'Probably Illarion will now be appointed in his place.'

'Probably not... As much as I esteem him, he's not that high-flying. Besides, he's spent half his life abroad, is as spoiled as a lapdog, while we need wolves here.'

"So Antony gets the chair.

'Or Ignati, the patriarch is fond of him.'

'The youthful hotheads are now thrust forward, the whole charismatic clergy of the old school have been worked out, all the dioceses have been purged so that everything goes quietly and smoothly... Don't you dare make a sound of your own!'

'We must not have that! You are too radical, Vasili Pavlovichi. There is a perfectly natural process going on. A new time has arrived, a fresh wind has risen, the dust has been blown away. His Holiness knows everything best, he sees things better... The Holy Church is reforming itself, to the hell of the fatherland.'

'But did you see what Father Andrej wrote on his timeline yesterday? Very vicious...'

'That you read that. Father Andrej is a deacon, and a deacon is only half human.'

They shot into laughter.

'I remember the bishop from the 1990s, he was a stately man. How he walked with it! Walking up a staircase... The infinite noblesse. An aristocrat, blue blood! The grass. Those people are leaving now...'

'And what do you have now with that court, Father Nikolaj? So you say they don't want to dispossess you? You filed a protest?'

'Yes.'

'I do want to help you. I'll get in touch. I'll call the colonel. Then we'll get rid of their horns soon.'

'Oh well, go ahead, go ahead! Ring the bell! I ask in all humility. I'm tired of fighting against the bully pulpit with that cultural community, I'm out of spunk. Some kind of enemies of the people. They must be made a head of, it's a shame I'm saying it.'

'They have now published a collective letter, that the church would supposedly be an assault on culture, of all things, they are destroying the historical heritage but what culture, when they rent out half the rooms, and sit in the other half themselves, with that damn museum of theirs, it's without me saying it... Sitting there with those stuffed animals...'

'Just recently, they exhibited the spine of a dinosaur. A real one, allegedly.'

'Bullshit! They never existed.'

'Natalia, put down some more of those appetizers,' the man, whom people had referred to as 'Father Nikolaj,' spoke authoritatively; apparently he was the big boss, a tall, lean man with a reddish-brown bart, like a kelt. 'Yes, and some more herring ... No, salad we still have plenty ... We're about to start.'

Suddenly I understood that I was lying on a platter, in the middle of a table with a green sheet on it and laden with delicacies. An amazingly bright and smokeless light emanated from the large chandelier on the ceiling. The people around me stopped being screens and I could distinguish their faces. Almost all of them wore biting black robes. Miraculously, some of them wore on their chests a small cross of gold and silver that looked like the ones there to put people to death. I thought the people sitting around the table were executioners, appointed by the sanhedrin, and it was obvious why their garments were black, that was the color of vain hope and you couldn't see the blood of the martyred on them very well either.

'So, my dear guests, let us pray and attack,' the host spoke.

Everyone stood up and turned to the wall with a large square board attached with the image of a woman with a Trump bowed head. On her arm she had an infant or something, I can't say for sure, I couldn't see it clearly from the table.

They sang a sad prayer and made a like gesture: each dated three fingers together as if for a pinch, one touched his forehead, belly and shoulders with it.

'Lord Jesus Christ, our God, bless our food and drink with the prayers of your immaculate mother and of all your saints, who are blessed for all eternity amen,' spoke the host, and everyone took their places again and plunged into the dis, already cooing: 'Let us remember the reverend.' 'Grant Thou to thy servant's soul rest with the saints, Christ...' 'I remember well, he used to joke: I say he, I shear the sheep, I do not skin them.' 'Just so!' 'Where there is no sickness, no sorrow, no lamentation, but eternal life...'

They poured wine in transparent, faceted cups and drank without haste. I was amazed at the refinement of those goblets, they seemed to be cut from a single piece of rock crystal.

'Pour you another red,' said the host. 'From the Crimea, a parishioner sent me, he has a wine company there now. In the province, as it is called, by the sea. Kirill Sergeyevich, the senator.'

'Ja-a, puffy wine...'

'Father Nikolaj, don't worry about that museum, everything will be fine. We'll get them!'

"God grant that.

'So, Natalya, come on with the appetizer,' the host told the woman who served them.

She arrived with a gleaming metal kettle and from it she sharpened hot soup with a ladle into the low meadow white bowl in front of each guest.

'May the angel sit at your desk,' she said, when she had finished, and she removed herself.

"Father Dmitri, I saw your television broadcast yesterday, that is simply a relief to the soul, may the Lord save you!" said a young man without a cross around his neck. 'But also try this fried fish, we have a new cook in the parish, a Ukrainian, simply a sorceress!'

The man who had been addressed as "Father Dmitri" was a gray-haired man with a meaty nose and the cautious gaze of a mild-mannered and self-absorbed man. He picked up his fork and reached for me.

I twitched my tail, swung forward and down a distance of several ells with great ease and was again in the blazing sea, out of reach of these riddle-like people at the table, whose voices now sounded choked, as if from behind a half-transparent curtain. I tried to accurately ascertain the meaning of some phrases, which they had used. I understood that they were holding a memorial meal in honor of the deceased bishop and fermenting who would be appointed in his place. What puzzled me was that they used a word similar to my name, but rehashed. And that was a deacon? And what were charismatic clergy? And days sent there? As always, I guess that balks the exiled elect of God whose foreheads were marked with His luminous seal. Further, I thought that these male disciples in their black garments were getting along well with Rome, if one of them quoted the words of Tiberius that the latter spoke when he refused to raise taxes in the provinces....

The people had suddenly disappeared. Their steely voices were hushed, like those of the Chaldeans. Around me was a fiery world, filled with millions of other sounds. I listened now to one voice, then another.

Someone argued with someone else until it made him hoarse, someone tore up a papyrus leaf filled with a small, and someone who could not find an argument picked up a knife that turned into a brightly shining letter. I witnessed a man reciting a great poem on the bank of a river by bird tracks, after hearing Homer is said to have torn his garments as a sign of sorrow. I come haphazardly picking out each resonance, concentrating on it, and then we play out the whole scene before me. I saw human lives. I suspected a find, and hymn to Isis Konk on under the vaults of her temple: 'O holy virgin, ruler of heaven and earth, thou art whore and saint, thou art barren, but numberless is thy offspring, thou art petite and grandmother, thou art the first and the last, go thou lighten the barrenness...'

I descended further, into the ruby darkness where many peoples flashed on from someone's revelation, and I saw how the righteous Job, surrounded by the dead, whose flesh was already falling off the bone, standing on a stone cried out, "Ye fighters of lies! Ye are all without use! What are ye wandering about in the darkness, like drunkards!'

The dead showed their teeth silently in response, moved in a dance on the dunes of steam, that was all they were capable of, and you saw me and spoke, with a threateningly raised finger, "And you are a useless doctor!

I wanted to say something in return, but changed my mind and swam on, past sacrifices, ziggurats, towers of silence, horned statues and porphyry altars, on which lay fragrant incense walls gifts: sheep's legs, barrels of bull's blood, myrtle berries and violets. I saw a huge golden gate from which slowly strode a cleric in costly costume toward the people, solemnly carrying a cup of wine before him. I swam past his face, he saw me, uttered a cry, and dropped his that cup, but instead of at, from it a tangle of earthworms crashed to the ground; seeing this, the people began to shriek, and I swam quickly upward, toward the solar disc which could be seen through the lymph fluid of existence.

Sometimes I saw fearful heads around me, but I was not afraid, I was a big fish.

I approached one of the windows of a castle tower surrounded by forest. Inside was a room with a vaulted ceiling that Bells topped off with various appliances and dishes. In the fireplace near the wall a fire was burning in which something in a dense cauldron was heated.

At the table sat an elderly man in a red hat with a tassel with a quill writing on a sheet of paper, "Did you heat the vermilion?" he asked the youngster who just stood the kettle next to him.

'Yes, master,' replied this one.

"Pour in vinegar, we'll boil it down!" the man in the red hat disposed.

I swam up to him and read what he had written down: Visita Interiora Terrae Rectificando Invenies Occultum Lapidem Veram Medicinam!

I felt that he sensed my presence. He sat the four in the inkwell, got up, walked up and down the room, and muttered, 'Dominus mecum! He is near...!

"What?" the youth asked, holding a slender, translucent vat of vinegar.

'God damn it! That I didn't realize that right away! The black dragon is near, and so the green lion must eat up the sun!" exclaimed the master, and it hurried to write something down again, and I swooped up along the wall of the tower some more.

When it was not far to the surface of this elastic pink being I stopped. The voices I heard merged into a rarefied screech that resembled the wail of the universe. I wanted to close my eyes, but could not because a fish has no eyelids. I was an eternal observer. I saw the sad dreams of sailors, around my ignited black stars, like the lights of the lighthouses of the underworld. A solemn circumambulation took place in honor of Osiris. A giant bearded serpent asked a man shipwrecked on the sea of words, "Who brought you, insignificant one, who brought you here? If you delay in answering who brought you to this island, I will turn you to ashes!'

The man was preparing to die, but the snake turned out to be benign and magnanimous, being one of the most unfortunate among snakes, he gave the fern guest many gifts, precious giraffe tails, and sent him home.

The cries of those condemned to death for disbelief dropped to the bottom, reminiscent of molten lead poured into water. I heard the songs of Raav. Swarms of evil underwater birds swam past me.

It turned out that I had hung like this between heaven and earth for thousands of years, gently moving my fins.

Then I saw a brilliant white fish in front of me, stroking me with tenderness, like a mother's birth.

'Follow me,' she said softly, without opening her mouth; I heard her voice in my head.

"Where to?" I asked wordlessly for a moment, noticing that she had little paws on her belly.

'If you stay in the past, they will eat you,' replied the fish, and she swam aside. I went after her with arrow-like speed.

Soon we were at the shore, had a sandy bank below us and the boundary between the sea and sky was very close.

On her feet, the white fish slowly walked out of the water. I tried to follow her example, but collided with the sand and was thrown back by a wave. I could neither walk nor breathe above the water. The white fish disappeared from sight, I searched vigorously with my tail and returned hastily to the depths, to home, to the element that was sweeter than any nectar to me.

Chapter 33 - The priestess

How many sought me and had not found me? How many sick people came to a stumble under the walls of Jerusalem to die there, while I was in Capernaum? People looked for me in Samaria, but I was in Galilee. It was rumored that I had arrived in Gischala, but I remained domiciled in Chorazin. The reason was my talentless doubles, plus the fact that there was no way I could settle quietly in one place. At times it seemed as if this collection of false Jezus would outlive me and its illusory existence would continue for centuries, changing skin color, facial features, habits and methods of deceiving people.

These non-valeurs were willing to serve anything but the truth: the state, the temple, the emperor in person, the heavenly legion, the blessed Februus and Sabazios, the calf of Aaron, and the kind of reverence behind which there was no higher purpose. A false Messiah would never be without canned wine, and without hot flat, barley sandwiches with honey, but could he even help someone heal an ulcer, step blood or pull a rotten tooth without someone subsequently dying from it?

Unlike many other people because the next woman wanted me in Chorazin, not because I had helped her, but to help myself. At least she meant it. And she approved of her visit with dignity.

One afternoon I returned from the lake, having caught some fish so that Gita would fry them according to her recipe, along with her wonderful fish sauce of oil, vinegar and flour. From afar I saw an armed crowd at the house and I was terrified, thinking that warriors of the tetrarch from Tiberias were coming to arrest me, or elders of the sanhedrin had sent an arrest unit from Jerusalem, to finally deal with me.

Already I wanted to throw my basket of fish more and flee into the impenetrable thicket on the northern slope in front of the city gate, and wait out the danger in the maze of paths and decide what to do next, but when I looked more closely, I understand that these people did not look like Jews or Romans, but in all probability were foreigners. Moreover, their camel days were as heavily laden as if they had been traveling for a long time.

And I pointed my modest homeward. A woman wearing an overgarment of blue sea silk detached herself from the crowd and approached me. I understood that she was the most important of these people. Her entourage waited at a reverent distance.

"Hello, Jesus, I am Tachmina, and I come to bring you the light of the world!" she said radiantly in Hellenic, and she smiled.

By way of reply, I smiled diffidently, surprised at the turn of events, and waited to see what she would say next. Her overgarment was constricted on her chest with a golden buckle shaped like the spread wings of a bird. Attached to her wide, woven belt was a bunch of tamarind sticks that tapped melodiously as she walked. At her dry feet were high boots of silver-plated leather. She was small in stature, with a finely carved figure and green eyes, in which green threads glittered, her gaze was enchanting, and I felt with amazement that it made me unspeakably happy to mother her just to look at me. With all my willpower I bear this temptation away from me, one was not allowed to fall like a log for the first magic woman.

'I am a priestess of the pale Ahura Mazda,' she continued. 'I made a trip to Rome, from the Kingdom of Kush, together with the envoys of our king, and on the way back I heard miraculous things about you in Damascus. The envoys went home, but I decided to make my appearance with you Jesus.'

"Illiterate members spread rumors about me that turn into fairy tales," I said. "Where are you hurting?

"No, I am in glowing health!" she exclaimed, and she laughed again, taking me by words with her gaze. 'I want to share the light of Ahura Mazda with you.'

I put the basket of fish on the floor. That was a surprise. I was rather curious to see what dialectical tricks this bewitching woman would play to get me into the nets of her little-understood deity. And I also thought that where in our community I would probably stare into Tachmina's eyes, I might well die of happiness. For that reason alone, perhaps it was worth accepting Achura Mazda's light in thanks....

'The goodness of Ahura Mazda is absolute!' my guests continued in hasty oppression. 'He is the greatest, he is the oldest and the youngest, he knows the past and the present, he is the personification of justice and love, he has created the space of the world... He is the ruler of thought who bestows humility, he is man to brother and father, such a loving father, and we must not forsake this possibility, because only Ahura Mazda is the key to salvation...'

"What makes Ahura Mazda better than the God of the Jews?" I asked, for I did find the conversation entertaining.

'He sent his son Zarathustra!' she exclaimed. 'And Zarthustra became a great prophet, through whom among the holy Scriptures have received...'

'Our God also sent a prophet to earth,' I replied.

"Then who?

"Me.

Tachmina's mouth fell open in surprise. She didn't know if it was my fear or if I was making fun of her. I grabbed my leaf-covered basket of fish, put my arm around Tachmina and said, "Let's continue the conversation inside, and you'll immediately eat a fish that God's son caught for you.

Gita and Tali left the service but did the most delicious delicacies for the female guest to crank out from their cellars, and even kegs of stubborn wine from Chios that went to our table had traveled a less long way than Tachmina did to see me.

She had servants standing by and a dozen powerful bodyguards who looked so fearsome that they probably could have taken a small town without a fight. Woe and death awaited the miscreants who wanted to raid Tachmina's caravans.

Her small army is looking for its tents in the garden next to the house.

At the dis, Tachmina started talking about her faith again, my students asking her a large amount of questions, and she answered them patiently.

Phillippus understood little of the Greek in which I was talking to her, and he asked me to ask her if they had houses of worship there with him. I translated his question.

"We have a crowd of magnificent temples where the holy light burns day and night.'

'That burns with us too!" exclaimed Matthew. 'Do you offer sacrifices? Do you slaughter lambs and calves?'

'No, we are against blood sacrifices.'

'Neither is our teacher for that,' Matthew said, speaking of his beard. 'Well, Jesus ...?

'Tachmina, tell me more about Zarathustra,' I requested.

'First, you must know that when he was born he did not begin to cry, but to laugh. He was washed with cow urine and baked in a sheepskin, his brain pulsed with such power that a hand extended to his head recoiled, that already foretold his extraordinarily great wisdom... With his laughter he slayed thousands of demons, and when he was great, he received the revelation of the sinful Achura Mazda... if you would come with me, Jesus, you could read that revelation, it is kept in the temple of the fire dog in the city of Mumbai. You could become one of our great priests, I see the reflection of the divine flame in your face...'

"Do you bend your knees for dogs?" I asked in amazement, which I found endearing.

'We honor the dogs, because they are without sin and that really is to their benefit,' Tachmina said.

Matthew started chuckling, and I was embarrassed for him.

"But why a firehound?" I asked.

'That is the unburnt dog who began to beam with delight when he saw Zarathustra, and he still burns. 'And we also honor the hedgehogs,' she continued, 'which are also sinful, but they are of no use to man, but it would be unjust not to honor him just because they do not serve man...'

Gita and Tali were silent, looking at her as the messenger from another world. That was true, by the way, because the land from which she had come to us was so far away that even the most greedy and purposeful Jewish merchants had not yet reached it. Months of travel on the stars, through dead deserts and along narrow mountain paths, through fords over rivers, in constant anticipation of the attacks of hordes of normals and bandits....

We talked all evening together, well into the night, but to my great disappointment, she did not light herself to sleep with me, but alone, in a small tent set up by her servants.

Since then, the fishermen of Galilee have caught a lot of fish large and small, the naked summit of Mount Hermon has more than once secured itself in the clouds, before the depraved human eyes; there have probably been a lot of prayer services held at the altars of the dogs of Kush since then, but I still think back to my defeat with shame and sorrow, when Tachmina slipped into her tent that night and one of her guards stood me up as politely as he was implacable. The following day she left, back to the Kingdom of Kush.

Chapter 34 - Magdalene

More and more sick people came to me, the remedies quickly ran out, and I sometimes walked quite far away from town to collect medicinal plants. These morning walks gave me mental strength, the green hills and palm groves north of Chorazin days people-free and pristine, and beyond them began the unused land where everything was overgrown with tamarind and wild cherry, with hazel, blackthorn, the prickly caper bush and an array of beneficial herbs.

One day I returned around noon with a bag full of St. John's wort, marjoram, mint and vitalia, and heard from the sisters that a man as unkind as he was suspicious was looking for me. It turned out to be the master stonemason from Sepphoris, whose wife I had saved by freeing her from her fruit.

He had come to Chorazin to deal with me, assuming that I was to blame for the death of his child. I don't know how exactly the stoneholder wanted revenge. The sisters said he was alone there unarmed. For that matter, of course, he could have hidden a knife in his belt, or in the folds of his robe. He demanded to be let in, but the sisters had denied him access to the house, it was clear. He had sat at the gate for a while and then had gone to the local chief rabbi to complain about me.

I spent the rest of the day in the medicine room, and I had told the nurse to tell everyone that I was not at home. I was afraid that the stonemason, in his drift, might send a miscreant to pounce on me. But by evening he left town and the coast seemed safe.

But a few days later, the rabbi called a meeting of the city council, at which the elders deliberated on what to do with "this Jesus, this seer, diviner and magician who disgraced our God-blessed city. They turned to the representative of the Roman city council, but he saw no wrongdoing in my conduct and said, 'You must manage your own Jewish affairs yourself, but according to the laws of the empire there is no reason to punish him.'

I never dared to visit the synagogue of Chorazin, the local rabbi that is a hard iron, had once served as a foreman in the army of Judea and did not allow unknown prophets into the house of worship entrusted to him. Therefore, I also believed that I was in no danger, because I had not antagonized anyone in town too zealously. I had done no bloodletting, no crowds gathered, and none of the locals had died after coming to me.

Or rather, I had visited the synagogue once, because I wanted to see it inside. With its dark stone, its great spaciousness, with arched vaults, it was larger than the synagogue of Capernaum, and in front of the cabinet in which the sacred law scrolls were kept was a stone rabbinical seat with fine carvings and armrests shaped like lion's paws. The seat dated more like a throne, and when the local rabbi sat in it facing the assembled congregation, he in all likelihood felt like a little king.

Throwing on this Moses-like seat, the rabbi made a vote against me among the townspeople of Chorazin, and with success. I don't know what exactly he is and what lines of Scripture he falsely invoked in the process, but the attitude of the townspeople toward me did deteriorate.

Moreover, Venedad from Gergesa had finally found out where I was, and had filed a complaint with the elders of Chorazin, explaining huh how an honorless debtor was holed up in a town. He demanded a lawsuit against me. But despite that, I was in no hurry to give the greedy Venedad his states back.

Overpowered by bad premonitions, I slept poorly. My salvation was that I spent more time in my boat on the lake, where I read, dreamed away in my observations of fish and noted birds. This proved extremely interesting; I was trying to figure out the building laws of the world not through mental labor, but through living nature. By this time I had managed to bring together a few serious books that helped me in this regard: the works of Aristotle, of Theophastus, of Herophilus... And then in particular the treatise on freshwater fishes by Philolaus of Croton, but I believe that the author excelled more in astrology than in other fields, knew a lot more about the secret position of the stars than about fishes and the wordless world in which they lived. Incidentally, he claimed that the sun was made of glass and even reflected the light coming from the Hestia exit, but that doesn't seem very likely to me.

Alcmaeon's works on living matter challenge more convincingly. Stunning is his description of the structure of a chick in its egg, and I share his view that the tree of knowledge is in the human brain, not in the heart. So with fish, too. Surely they didn't come swimming to the little boat to eat the bread crumbs I threw into the water because they sensed it with their hearts, they had nostrils just like humans to lap up the smell of food.

I had always wanted to get hold of something from the works of Avel Cornelius Celsus, but I had never succeeded, because all the copies of his books had already been bought up by the learned men of Rome and did not reach the shores of Israel. I had only read excerpts from them that a physician from Egypt had shown me, and I immediately understood that Avel was a great healer. I even wanted to go to Rome to be his pupil for a while. I waited until circumstances allowed me to do so. He was not so young at that time, and I prayed for Avel's health so that I could still meet him in the flesh.

By studying the living world, I myself could significantly perfect my skill as a healer, but...

I needed new books, and that was doable, just sending one of my students with those groceries to Caesarea, where there were books for sale in the port, or to Jerusalem, to the vendors of a store in the lower city, with him you sometimes come to find something new. Yes, a lot closer, in Tiberias, you had the library, built by the bookman Issahar, but only rabbis seem to be able to go there. How silly! By the way, I'm sure Issahar didn't include any books in his library that were really worthwhile.

I had to cut open corpses to know better how the human body was put together, to study its structure, not to look for the signs of a divine presence in it, as some madmen did. Well, I came to make arrangements with intrepid people who for money secretly brought corpses from the graveyard to me. Sure, you had to be careful that they didn't kill defenseless vagabonds along the Lord's roads to do so, because opening a grave was a time-consuming job.

But what I needed above all was peace, and achieving it was the most complicated of all, now that the rabbi of Chorazin had decided to smoke me out of town. He had the inhabitants make a complaint against me to Tiberias Antipa, to the sanhedrin, in Jerusalem, he came to the house of Gita and Tali when I wasn't there and tried to placate him, to throw me out the door. Without result admittedly, the sisters loved me because I had taught him to enjoy life in old age and they did not want to lose their teacher.

The rabbi incessantly fines the ill-fated net.

On the upside, from time to time I also get women on my roof who had read me and now came to tell me they were pregnant with me.

The power of the stonemason from Sepphoris was the last straw.

I fell more and more prey to restlessness and decided to leave Chorazin for a while (a month at most), wait until everything calmed down and then returned to him in silence.

It was decided to move to Magdala.

On the eve, Philippus went to the pool and shared that he had become acquainted with a potter with a detached house and that we could live there for a small fee.

When I left the house, I left all the instruments on the shelves in the treatment room. I also left a lot of my books there: on the holy disease, On the eyes, Plant theories, To the astronomer... I only tookThe seed of the Unicorn with me, from that book I did not want to part with. Yes, I knew it by heart by then, but sometimes enjoyed the mere sight of it, of the slim rows of words, set in a more perfect order than the archers and haetaires of the illustrious Alexander.

On the eve we organized a farewell's meal with Gita and Tila, who became attached to us and did not want to let us go. I tried to reassure the sisters and said we would be back soon.

The little boat I had bought remains behind at the Chorazin jetty.

My students also left town on Sunday carrying a lot of load, leaving most of their belongings in the sisters' house. All of our possessions fit on one pack mule.

Once I left Chorazin, I look from the top of the neighboring hill through the branches of a eucalyptus at the strip of pale blue water, fringed by pink and lilac mountains, and it became so bitter to me, as if I were seeing the Sea of Galilee for the last time.

We made no hurry on our trip through Galilee, which I loved so much. In some places it looked like a sea of green that had stiffened during a storm. High in the sky the hawks prayed, in the sodden bushes along the road the eternal music of the cicadas sounded. Now there was the wild, impenetrable undergrowth, then there were those in the untouched fields and meadows. The naked rocks that hung over the road ... the small patches with a dozen houses of dark stone. The women at the well, with a water jug on their shoulders. Approaching us came the donkeys, dribbling in the clouds of dust and packed on either side, slowly separating the camels, accompanied by pitch-black tanned floats. The shadows of clouds drifted through the valleys, like ghosts of negroes who had conquered these fertile places created by the Most High by way of justification for the fact that so much of the Jewish land was desert. The warriors of Assyria, Egypt and Babylon had come here, but where were they now? The Romans would also leave again.

We ate and rested a bit in a spot near Beth said and arrived in Magdala toward evening. As she said her white haphazard houses were already showing themselves above us, we encountered a crowd of men standing in a semi-circle around a woman lying on the ground, or rather, on the blubbery earth flattened by cattle. Beneath the palms nearby was a stream, where the local shepherds watered their cattle.

We came to the exact moment when the woman's fate was decided. It was obvious: the mob had led her outside the city walls to stone her. Among the crowd that had thronged together, it was a broad-shouldered rabbi in a blue cape with tassels and a snow-white headband who stood out, ranting loudest of all, firing at the people: 'Stone her severely, to drive evil out of Israel. So it was and so it will always be!'

"My name is Jesus!" I shouted, walking closer, hoping they had heard from me. 'Stop it! What has this woman done wrong?'

"Do you want to join in the entertainment?" asked a tall, tall-backed man in a black soup dress; there was a general vile laughter. 'She's a prostitute! She has disgraced our city! We want to fulfill the law.'

My students and I could not do anything against such an excess, I could not stop them by force, while they could easily kill us dead, especially since there were quite a few drunks among and, probably they had celebrated that day and the spirit of wine had claimed a bloody victim by evening.

I had to find arguments, somehow interact with them with the word. I was disgusted by what these senseless people were doing, many of whom were illiterate and could not write their names, but who so needed to carry out the law with triumphant ferocity. The woman lay motionless on the ground, with her knees drawn up and with her hands in front of her face, her back to the bench, and I thought she had adopted the right posture, that it could prolong her life for a few minutes or even lords, if someone put a stop to the execution of the punishment: the stones that flew at her from the crowd could not hit her back, and the spinal column Bas bell the most vulnerable place. From the front, her body was protected by her arms and legs, whose broken bones could grow back together, something the spine could never do again.

'Do Julie have permission from the Roman government? Or from Antipa, your righteous king, may the Lord and protect? I asked, addressing the old rabbi in the blue cape; but he turned away demonstratively, so as not to lower himself to a conversation with me.

Threatening cries rang out, "Are you a traitor, Jesus? An accomplice of the Romans? We are not slaves of Rome, we only keep the law of Moses!'

"Out you go!

'Pick up the stones, godly brothers!'

Some of them picked up a stone, but they hesitated, the mood of the crowd had not yet reached the temperature necessary for a sanctified killing, but that point could be reached at any moment, and I tried feverishly to think of what to do, since no one with words would be able to stop the flying stones anymore, or only perhaps the Indian teachers, who had reached the highest degree of bliss, but even of that I was not sure.

'Master, let's go, this could all end very badly, we cannot stop every execution in Israel,' Matthew said hoarsely in my ear, then he tugged at my sleeve, but I ignored him.

'Does she actually have a husband?' I asked quietly, looking at them one by one. 'Is that you, perhaps? Or you?

"That had to be added?

'Who wants a prostitute like that?'

'Shave off, you're told!'

'Jason, grab a heavier one Stijn, you won't throw a frog dead with yours.'

'Dumbasses!" I cried. 'The prophet Moses said to stone only women who were unfaithful to their husbands. How can you carry this out when she is not even married?'

'She bewitched a venerable man, with wife and children,' boiled the voice of the haughty old rabbi. 'Nor is she from our city at all! And she deserves death.'

"Where is that man?" I asked.

'He is not among us.'

I wondered who this little pathetic man was, and I articulated the last argument that came to my mind at that moment: 'But after all, she did not put him in her bed by force! But by the greatness of her beauty! Then let us be proud that this beautiful woman has come forth from the daughters of Israel!'

"You're babbling, Jesus!

'It's been beautiful!

At that moment I understood that the woman was doomed, and at the same time, as could happen at a moment of great despair, with an utmost effort of mind and spirit, the solution came to me: 'Very well, but then I'll throw the first stone!" I cried, with big eyes and roaring laughter. 'That will be the stones of shame! That will be the terrible shame of death! After that she will die! You will see that!

They stiffened, and no one tried to stop me. Everyone was mesmerized as I ran up to the woman, poked her in the side with my sandal and shouted, "Get on all fours, you cursed slut!

She immediately did as I had told her. I lifted her clothes with a jerk, knelt behind her, freed my zajin, which by then had already become hard, and began to copulate hastily. I had to hurry, before someone in the crowd noticed what I was doing and would pull me away from her. I held the woman by her neck, pressing her head to the ground so that her luscious curls swept through the dust.

'What are you standing there for!" sounded the voice of the old man, the first to come to himself from what he saw. 'That man is a peasant, he should be killed too!'

But people were no longer in a hurry to do what they had been planning; they wanted to see this erotic tragedy through to the end, and then finish the woman, and maybe me too.

Sweat gushed down my face, ran into my eyes, I wanted to discharge my seed as quickly as possible, but I was totally unable to do so. I glanced at the crowd and saw as if through a blur that the herd in front of me had come to a halt and was holding its breath: instead of feet, there were the hooves, instead of clothes, the hairy bodies. I heard no voices, but quiet bellowing.

Someone from the crowd loosened his fingers and dropped his stone on the ground, and it occurred to me that this stone fell from the sky.

The woman began to involuntarily accommodate me in her movements, sat down on my zajien, and at that moment I finally poured my seed into her. I was proud; it was a victory worthy of a Gideon.

I stood up and helped the woman up. She screamed with fear and excitement, expecting death, but I knew that in that moment she had been reborn. I had accomplished what I wanted to accomplish.

"My seed is in her! I shouted. 'Now you cannot show her. By killing her, you kill her child, and you all come before the court.'

Someone dashed at me, saying "you dirty mess'it!" and wanted to kick me, but Andreas pushed him away. The man fell into the crowd and immediately calmed down, as if the raging spirit that had led him had flown away.

I watched the young man, who had been called Jason and stood mesmerized, holding the stone and with his mouth open.

First the elders left, then the whole crowd moved toward the city, as if the one who had incited her to murder had consciousness this morning or had fallen asleep.

My students expressed loudly their joy at this denouement, especially Matthew, who was tired from the day and wanted to rest in the city as soon as possible.

I grabbed the woman by the Kim and turned her countenance toward me, taking a closer look.

She had a long, tawny face with a narrow nose. Deep blue eyes. On her cheeks were bleeding scrapes, one had already managed to hit her when they had carried her out of town. On her right earlobe was also blood, someone had ripped out her earring. On the left it was still in place, a silver earring with green stones. On her neck the white Stripe could be seen from an old scar.

"What's your name?" I asked.

'Maria.'

'That's my mother's name, I don't like that name. I prefer to call you Magdalena, since you were born again in this city.'

"As you wish.

'I am a teacher and medic, and these are my students. Will you join us?

'Gladly... I dragged myself to Magdala in vain... I was advised against coming here... But I had to earn money anyway.... And I had just been exiled from Tiberias.'

'I get chased everywhere too, and in our time that's a sign that we're doing everything right,' I said.

'That rotten kid ripped out my earring...' she complained, feeling in her ear.

'I'll give you some new ones,' I promised.

'You were good...' Maria smiled. 'I liked what you did ... You're a real stud.'

The sun went down, the wind rose, above us came the dry rustle of a palm-top and white dust rose above the road, there along the angry inflamed and unsatisfied men returned to town. A violent day died away, the stony earth murdered its pent-up heat, the trees and bushes around us took less and less space, and were robbed of their shade.

We didn't go to Magdala. Too dangerous. We spent the night far from the city, in an orchard, under the bare sky, where once again I had intercourse with Mary, but now without haste, to prolong the pleasure of my access to her body. I understood that I had met a woman who could completely satisfy me: I admired each of her movements, she found me again and again, and at times I was amazed when I got the strength for so many times of intercourse in a row.

Maria came to remember her parents poorly; they had been killed by Roman hand in the quelling of a revolt by yet another follower of Yehuda ben-Hizkiah. She said she had grown up in Gamle, in the family of her aunt, who had disliked her little niece because she felt the sweet girl had the coals in her to turn into a blazing fire. At 13, Maria gave herself to her aunt's husband and the following day they fled the house, even though he had since conceived plans to enjoy her young body on the sly for his wife.

Since then, Mary had wandered along Israel's lordly ways, offering herself to anyone who wanted it. There was not a day that she did not work, but she always had money, knew dozens of men to avoid becoming pregnant, had an excellent tongue, and knew how to excite even the most declared hermit. In the process, she herself experienced a primitive kind of pleasure from carnal love; every coitus represented for her the moments of being true. She knew what she was talking about.

Mary had tried thousands of men and the languid Eros blessed her path.

An occasional jealous man lashed out at himself as she left him for another. A few lost their minds or became as pious as ground doll shit. The young boys she abused wanted her for a wife.

She could pretend innocence and be avenged.

For her sake, throats were cut in roadside inns.

Predatory spoils were shared with her.

From time to time she had led a band of robbers, like a guiding star, by igniting them with her victorious fornication, and then eventually they all perished and she found a way to save her life. Her friends went to the cross, to the noose, or lay beaten to death before the walls of Jodphat, or he meanwhile danced with her tambourine, in a town far away, in the house of a venerable man who wanted to have a good time.

The ghosts followed her, along with the living, in a victorious procession.

The wives and mothers of men enchanted by her cursed her; they wrote the name Mary on a bowl and smashed it; they modeled dolls resembling her out of dough and burned them in the fireplace; the rabbis invoked the heavens to make a piece of darkness descend on her, compacting it to the state of a stone. But it was all equally futile; she did not believe in curses.

In Tyre, she copulated with a billygoat for 30 drachmas in front of feasting Hellenes. She was a bacchante, filled with God's zeal.

Up to a few times she was beaten half to death. On one occasion she dug Jordan up to her neck in the sand and left to die, but long-drawn nomads had dug her out again. She fled from them and in the desert seduced a famous hermit and hesychast named Zechariah.

I understood that she was virtually immortal, and that animated me even more and wounded me even more. Whenever death came along, she laughed at him. She despised Having Every Night and had no awe for tetrarchs, or for great rabbis, but she was always willing to make herself completely subservient to her lover of the moment, even if that was a slave with the brand of F on his forehead, willing also to cater to all his lusts. Maria liked it when my hair hurt during coitus, that made the fire in her flare up.

After settling in Ashkelon, she became the most famous harbor whore and was more dangerous to the sailors' guests than the siren of Peloriadis, because she finely undressed him. No one could resist Maria when she appeared on the seashore streets in her white tunic with the luscious granite-colored ruffles, perfumed, with a blanched face and with eyes, lit with charcoal and saffron juice. Eventually she was caught when she helped organize the robbery of several young residents of the city, who lured the Hellenes aboard, carried them away and sold them as slaves, and the city council determined to sink Maria in a lead coffin, 25 stadia from the coast. A ship was equipped for this purpose, Mary was imprisoned in the jail, but her lover bribed a guard and she managed to escape.

After spending some time in Jerusalem, Fasaïlida and Tiberias, was landed in Magdala, a city, whose inhabitants did not appreciate the caliber of her art and took advantage of it.

I immediately discovered the divine fearlessness in her. She practiced the things of love according to the most rudimentary and sordid laws of this great act, and I'm sure that on the basis of her erotic experience you could set up a system of knowledge as elegant as it was adequate, a new philosophical school that revealed to people through the great pleasure and the great sin the Golden Light of the other.

Mary saw the hidden. A scintilla voluptatis illuminated the space around her.

We were alike. And I understood that it was useless to expect gratitude from her for her rescue, she would disappear at any moment, like a little snake among the rocks. That I had saved Mary, by now, had no meaning for her. And rightly so.

Chapter 35 - The Ascent

We wandered through Galilee for a few months, were in Gischale and Zabulon, went to Perea, on the other side of the Jordan, and almost everywhere we were received with enthusiasm. I felt new powers flowing in and even healed a few lepers, even though that was the most difficult thing of all, it required a huge energy, but I felt how it vibrated in my fingertips. As a precaution, we did not visit Capernaum, Tiberias and Gergesa, because the first city had a strict prefect, the second was the residence of the tetrarch and the third of the merchant Venedad who, according to the stories, would strangle me if he encountered me and I did not repay my debt to him.

I took away curses, could offer healing for tetanus and rhinitis, made deliveries, drove off fruit using herbs or, if necessary, a pessary.

AirDrop again had a crowd of people with us and we got a lot of willing women again. One of them, whom I had once known, had a 10-year-old boy with her and said he was my son, but I polled my students and we came to the conclusion that the woman was lying, the boy was reddish, while his mother, like me, had dark hair. It was not the first case of people trying to brand me as a father in a lying manner.

I look right through people, and can read their minds. Maybe it was just a conversational experience, and it wasn't so hard to read the thoughts of such a rural tanner who came for advice. As so often, people usually wanted to beg a blessing from me: for a marriage, a move or a trade deal, and if someone really didn't look like a sick person, I would come right away and say, if he even came up to me, "I know where you are from and I bless you! Often that was enough, I then immediately had a follower there, returning home and testifying to this master, because he saw such as his sacred duty.

Yes, to pass for clairvoyant you did not necessarily have to seek out the ancient altar to Baal in the mountains, sacrifice a young boy on it and read all the unknown by his entrails. It was enough to train your mind.

People wanted signs and got them. I remember well, one time when I was spending the night in the open field, I had the heavenly calf appear to us. The campfires burning, much wine and sikhera had been drunk, I stood up and understood, turning to the sky, "Come down and lift us up the dog of the moon, oh pudgy and much-starved calf!

The moon capsized, the women let out a scream, I can't stay on my feet and fell face-first into the grass and felt how the back of my head had been hit by the ice-cold metal hoof of a deity, and this brought my insides into an inexplicable rapture, I had been in communication with the heavens, with the animal secrets of the night sky bodies.

I taught people to enjoy life. Nothing grief, nothing self-abasement! The time of the weeping psalms written by David in the desert was over; I knew how to fill every hard with the spirit of immortality.

'It is easier to obey the rules given to us as a bag of curses from our fathers than to fathom the will of God!' I said to the people, standing on the stair steps of the synagogue of Zaboelon. 'Learn to listen to yourself, for God dwells in each of us! The times are fulfilled! Don't be afraid of your own desires! Do not reject yourself! I speak truly! Hear me! Do not allow the forces of evil to catch your hearts in a net of pitiful duties! And the never extinguishing light shall rise above you!

The local rabbi tried to chase me away, but my stand did not permit him.

'My words are the light!" I continued in rapture. 'I love everyone! Love everyone! As the sun hardens wax and clay, so do the hearts of clay harden against me. Be as wax! And you will be given, dear people!'

The people protected me and the world was no longer a hostile army camp. In some spots the inhabitants threw palm branches at my feet and spread their garments before me, catching up with me with songs and hymns. With a wreath of cypress I lay at the fanciest tables, sat at the head of dinners with invited guests, again received permission to preach in a synagogue, and dreamed of making the temple my tribune, from which from at last the word would resound that contradicted death. My phlegm made eczema, shingles and ringworm disappear, my laying on of hands dispelled fever, and there was no doubt that the whole Jewish people needed me and that without me the temple was like a white tomb beaten full of charnels. I had to breathe new life into it.

It was as if I only had to say one word and Jordan's date would separate.

I was the everyman's friend and cunning schemer with the keys to hearts and small towns. Sometimes there were declared wretches and deadbeats who bowed their heads before me, giving me as a sign of repentance the silver where the blood had not yet been properly washed off.

And that was a benefit. My first teacher Nikolaos had already said that he was concerned in the first instance with those who manfully sought wisdom and only in the second instance with those who made no missteps and could be accused of no injustice.

I let my own blood flow again and drenched the flocking with it, but diluted with water, so that there was enough for everyone; yes, and also the blood itself was more powerful and worked even at low concentration.

One man had a lame hand, and when he moved away from me he had power over it again.

In a spot near Jotapata, I brought in a man to me, and I cured him of the ailment which lay in that he never kept his mouth shut and was at one and the same time the same. I put my seal on his lips and he remained silent, to the indescribable joy of those close to him. The incantation was supposed to work for a year.

And in ecstasy I once caused myself to fill an empty dish with boiled beans and did not understand how exactly this had happened. A real miracle was as fleeting and irrevocable as a catastrophe, it was impossible to describe it truthfully by finding all the causes for it, but you could not escape it either, it descended upon you like an inexorable and eternal light.

Something had changed in the nature of the world, and everything I tackled succeeded.

The sky came so close that I could poke it with my wand.

Even the wild animals understood that, vicious guard dogs licked my hands and pigeons were afraid to shit if they sat down on my shoulder. Probably I could have gotten a crocodile to take me from one bank of a river to the other, but I couldn't try it out, you didn't have crocodiles in Galilee.

Of course, not everyone bent their knees before me, but the mockery, rebuttals and scornful remarks of the few irritated and believing in nothing only gave me more strength. Sometimes among the crowd that remembered me mingled Pharisees, for whom the joy of the people at the sight of their teacher was more bitter than wormwood. But I was the flame that burned on any word, praise as well as jeers served one and the same purpose. The substance of words gave me extra strength. I look at my life as if fragments of text that I had managed to strip of all worldliness, they could be shifted, added to, and changed places until the perfecter human life was created, and then (soon already, it seemed to me), as Isaiah had foretold, the desert and the dry earth would make merry, then the land would rejoice and blossom like a daffodil.

My disciples were also enveloped by the cloak of love of the people, and all the women knelt down before Magdalene: on one occasion she abandoned us for a while, to look up a friend in a spot near Mount Meron, and the people sprinkled the earth with flower petals at the gate through which she would ride in there on her donkey.

"Hosanna, Mary!" one called out to her. 'Bless you who come to us in the name of Jesus of Nazareth!'

She thought back on it with pride, she loved the fact that women and men knelt before her and kissed her hands that smelled of spikenard and cinnamon. Yes, all this was done in my name, and Magdalene was the female hypostasis of the Messiah.

Incidentally, that did not prevent her from becoming a man with the women during love-making.

In those days I saw in the heavens the sign trade! And I decided that I could prophesy freely in Jerusalem. I wanted to enter the city as a victor.

I felt that my gift of orator had greatly gained strength; I was ready to argue with the entire sanhedrin at once. It seemed to me that the time to keep my hiding was over. I wanted to serve the truth in a different format, along with the king and the Roman government. I knew what had to be done, how the laws had to be reformed, how the conflicts between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had to be eliminated, how Rome had to be shown that the people of Israel could be both independent and wise. I even knew how to modernize Jerusalem's waterworks to save on drinking water! I knew how to normalize and develop trade between the cities of Israel and other nations, how to change the tax system... And then when it would finally be possible to sell to Arabia or so thousands of ritual calves, goats and lambs, instead of sacrificing them in the Temple... And distribute the money to the needy! Curing the sick! Feeding the poor! Making sure that at least in Israel there were unhappy people left. If only to make one city ideal... Open healing houses and schools where the children of the poor would be educated free of charge. Prohibit corporal punishment and abolish painful forms of capital punishment ... The main thing was to find a new language in dealing with Rome. And to bring together in the houses of medicine the scholars who were experimenting with new medicines.

My students did not share my enthusiasm. Simon tried hardest of all to talk me out of the trip to Jerusalem. Andrew and Philip fell in with him. Judas was silent. Matthew chuckled meaningfully and wrote something down, as always, and I understand that his work was but an artificial world very far from the truth, even then I was the protagonist of it. Magdalena and three more women who were with us at that time, namely no part in the discussion of the plans. One of them, the very young Egyptian Niktimena, spoke poor Hebrew, but was very beautiful. She had come with them from Egypt with her father, who had trading interests in Palestine. They were to return home again, but the father died suddenly of an illness, and Niktimena, having no way to reach her hometown, entered the service of an inn whose owner, an old Jew, abused her. She fled from him and joined us. I must confess, she was enchanting: as slender as a reed, with silky soft dark skin and firm, perfectly mature breasts. Through her large dark eyes, it was as if Noet herself, the Queen of Stars, was your touch. She made friends with Magdalene, who cared for her like a blood mother.

'Do not be afraid to go to Jerusalem,' I said to my disciples. 'When the branch of the fig tree softens and shoots leaves, you know that it is almost summer, and when people everywhere rejoice in us, believe and open the doors of their houses on Sunday morning, it means that our great triumph is coming. Drink this cup to the bottom and on those messengers you will find the gold!

Deep in my heart, I wanted to return to Chorazin as soon as possible, to the home of Gita and Tali, hoping that the displeasure with me had calmed down and that the inhabitants would focus their inheritance on something else, such as the new law that required an alabaster bust of Tiberius to be placed in front of every synagogue. I hoped to continue my work in the room where my books had been left and my medicinal instruments, but I did not know how the sisters would welcome Magdalene. Would they get along with her? I could not send her away, I had become very attached to her body, and every coitus was a celebration: on a soft sponde in the room, in the terms among the clouds of steam, beside the campfire, on the meadow under the stars. But most of all I wanted to be with Mary in the presence of people, on the naked, rocky earth, as it was the first time, when her beautiful writhing hair had swept through the dust.

It was almost Passover.

We decided to go to Jerusalem.

Chapter 36 - Lazarus

On our way to Jerusalem, we stopped at Bethania, and at Magdalene's request, we decided to visit the house of a man named Lazarus. Magdalene wanted to see him. She said that Lazarus had once given her shelter and had helped her very much, and had bought her freedom from court servants, it seems. I didn't doubt that they had had something and I was jealous, but I thought it was good to pay a visit to this Lazarus, not to give in to my possessiveness, like pettiness, greed and suspicion, that feeling was a strong stand in the way of someone who bore it comparing his sandals to the wings of the Messiah.

That day about 20 men walked behind us. As always, these were mainly loafers eager to earn a cue from the fuss: beggars, slaves, feeble-minded women, invalids and children with no roof over their heads. The people of Bethania watched our stops with suspicion.

The house of lazarus stood on the main street, in the center of town. It was a small, tastefully decorated villa, not peculiar to the province, as one passing Italy would have put it. We entered the yard, while the crowd remained outside the gates, Simon threatening our scruffy retinue that he would cut an ear off anyone who entered the house. He did a good job of that, those folks could empty and smear any home in a matter of moments.

To adjourn us, Lazarus' wife, accompanied by her friends, came out, a not-so-young woman who had retained the traces of her former attractiveness. Her face was thick with tears. She had more of a Roman than a Jewess. Her name was Martha. She regarded Magdalene with undisguised contempt. It turned out that Laser had died three days before and his remains still lay in the house. Martha had loved him so much that even as a dead person she wanted to keep him with her as long as possible.

I thought there was something about the house of lasers. As we walked there, I envisioned how we would all have a nice meal together and then rest in the clean, comfortable rooms, after which I would then prophesy to the neat people of Bethania, and so I was very unpleasantly struck by the fact that Lazarus had died. His wife's head was clearly not turned toward us, although Magdalene did not shake herself off and began to rant in rapture to Martha that she had brought the great teacher to her and that she should consider it a great happiness.

To get in, I had to act briskly and surprise Martha with something. But with what? And I decided to give her hope, since that suited me even better than setting bones.

"Your husband will rise again!" I said, looking her straight in the eye.

By this time I had learned to look at people in such a way that they complied. This was not easy, I scanned all my mind power, began to believe in what I was saying myself, and thus the lie takes on the status of a prophecy. In such moments, everything people knew as straw truths was consumed by the fire in my eyes.

'On the youngest day, everyone gets up,' Martha replies calmly, without rushing to invite me in for the continuation of the conversation, she remains not very indulgent.

All eyes turned to me. Behind the fence the crowd murmured; from the bushes a black kitten emerged.

'Cabbage, my little one, so there you were!' said Martha, taking the creature on her arm. 'He's been wandering around for more than two days, so stumper, you must be starving...?'

I could leave, but that would be a stain on my reputation. What kind of teacher was that who was not even allowed to enter anyone's house? Rumors so did the dogs...

"Martha, I'm giving your husband life back!" I said loudly.

'Why are you laughing at me!" exclaimed Martha. 'After all, I am a widow now... His body is already starting to reek... Lazarus and I had such a good time, we discussed everything together, and he did so much for me... He was so gentle... you won't find a second one like that in the world! Do you understand? And she burst into tears and put the edge of her dark kerchief in front of her face. The kitten freed herself from her embrace and jumped to the ground. The friends put their arms around her to comfort her and looked at me in exasperation.

'Let me see him, Martha,' I said sternly.

Lazarus lay on a low wooden bed with reed mats. The corpse was decomposing, it stank, and Magdalene dressed her nose and immediately shot out into the room. No one could resurrect him, not even the Lord God, who was not so foolish as to render inoperative the law of death they themselves had created. But I was planning something else. And for that, my knowledge and strength had to be sufficient.

I looked at the face of the deceased for an extended period of time and tried to imagine his features.

The body of Lazarus had something of a sacrifice on an altar, but for some reason it was not accepted, the fire no longer descended from heaven to consume it.

My students, Magdalene and some of the women next to us spread out under the trees in the garden near the house. Martha and her friends brought them something to eat.

I got Martha to send all her friends to their own house and stay away from the room where I was working on the corpse. You could see that Martha didn't quite believe me, but she felt my directions out, if only to have something to do and thus get some distraction, ease the pain of her beloved husband's death a little.

I then gave Martha a strong sleep aid to drink and she left for her room upstairs.

After waiting a while until she was deeply asleep, I told my students to undress lazily, carry them into the garden and bury them under a fig tree. Using the shovels they found among the garden tools, they did so. My students were in a hurry and it became a shallow grave. Dogs might find the grave, but luckily Lazarus and Martha did not have dogs, and around the plot of the house with its spacious garden was a stone wall that finely hid everything from the view of curious people.

Then I grabbed a shovel, wandered a bit through the garden wave here and there and looked at the earth here and there. Everywhere was loose brown soil, very suitable for fruit trees but not for me. There were plenty of stones, also useless. Finally, in the far south corner of the garden, near a bit, I found some red clay. I had to have that.

I told my students to grab a stretcher with four ephah of clay and bring it to the room along with a small vessel of water, while I myself cut off enough thin twigs. Matthew asked if I sometimes intended to bake pots. I told him that no large oven had yet been built for firing my pots. Matthew was silent.

I sent Judas to the market to buy seven pieces of white cloth, two doves and a chicken egg. I told him to go ahead, because otherwise Martha would wake up and might take it into her head to come and see how the process of raising her husband to life was going on.

Using the twigs in a language found in the house, I made a man-sized scarecrow, put it on the death bed and smeared it with the clay diluted with water. I made haste. Matthew helped.

Judas came with what I had asked him: the fabric was solid, the pigeons cooed in their cage. 10 eggs he had bought, because they were not sold by the piece in town.

One egg I masoned into the doll's head.

Judas in Matthew gave the doll fingers and toes. I modeled the face: the mouth, cheekbones and all the rest, it became perfectly natural. But with the eyes already a problem, their sockets could not be left empty. I thought for a moment about what to do, then I took from Matthew two lepta and pressed his into the eye sockets of clay. The greenish sheen of the Kober satisfied me completely.

Next, I got a hefty zajin for the doll for all intents and purposes but immediately wound up, because, after all, a clay zajin was not going to stand up on its own, and I did not want to deprive my ship of such an important function.

Then I reached into the ring finger of my left hand with a small needle and smeared a drop of blood on the doll's mouth.

If you wanted to create a human being, as is well known, you had to first ignite the passions in him, but how exactly you did that was up to the creator himself, according to the situation, the doll's destination and the materials available. I decided to make sure that my doll was rigid with passions, completely wrapped in them. Seven was the minimum number of passions with which a being resembled a human being. Therefore, I pointed the seven pieces of cloth on the ground and took the first pigeon out of the cage. Holding the dove in my right hand, I pressed it with a brusque movement of my left the head and wrote with the blood spotting from the bird's ramp on the first piece of cloth:

Evenness

As I thus put one bird to death after another, I wrote down six more formulas on the remaining six pieces of cloth:

Stupidity

Honor

Rude

Small smart

Big smart

Stubbornness

With the help of Judas in Matthew, I developed the life of clay with these rags.

Now all I had to do was give the doll a beard. Lazarus had had a blond one. I sent Judas into town once more, to snort up flax somewhere. He ran away, was back in no time, with the flax, and the dolls got a natural-looking beard. Lazarus had been bald, so there was no need to put fake hair on the head.

A bloodied rag wrapped and ready to rise along the loamy Lazarus birds. The drop of my blood was to provide the bird blood tenfold and with it the power of the passions. We miss the doll in the clothes that Lazarus had left behind.

The new Lazarus was dressed in robes, but the most important thing of all still had to be done: casting an incantation on the clay body, so that the spirits of the earth would sail into him and make him move. I very much hoped that I would manage that and regretted that I had never practiced this before. I had the methodology from the forest showy handwriting of the great scholar Abram of Emalina, which I had gotten hold of when I was staying at Cyrenaica, with an enlightened Chaldean. I asked him to sell me the scrolls, he refused, but thanks to my good memory I remembered the text almost word for word.

Standing at the head end of the sponde, I applied the word meat to the doll's life-filled head with the bone needle and spoke liltingly, "Swirling spirits of the volcanic earth! In the name of another's suffering I quench your thirst for incarnation! Enter into this sweet body! Dissolve in it, like the salt in the water! Let legions of fires become a single fire! A living egg and a man's blood await you! Break out of the shell of the earth! Go wild, vibrate! Like the power of cursed torments! Luminous wrath! Vibrate!

The doll did begin to move, but it was as if an invisible person were pulling on invisible wires, checking whether a leg, an arm, was working, or the head could turn. A first sound erupted from the loamy Lazarus' throat, something big and a little gray goo dripped down his red cheek.

The incantation worked! I let out a shriek of joy, after all, I had succeeded in bringing a doll to life the first time, but Judas verbalized and recoiled backwards, toward the door, while Matthew groaned and reached for his heart. It made me joyful.

But the doll was still mute, like a small tablet on which words had to be applied using the vibration of my voice. Silence was required, lest the puppet store up accidental, unnecessary sounds. I told Judas in Matthew to go to the garden and sit silently with everyone else.

Left alone, I uttered the formula Ab ovo audi me, with which the process was to be begun, and then I continued in a muffled voice, "I Am Lazarus... It is a miracle... I tell you truly...!

The doll began to move its lips noiselessly to repeat after me. That meant the words were printed in the structure of the small.

"I welcome you... May your days be long and happy... Sprinkle me with water... Praise the Lord... Anathema!" I dictated.

When I had uttered all my most cherished quotes from the Torah, Magdalene stepped into the room, came to sit at my feet and whispered, "Jesus, I want you.

'Go away, beast, not now,' I replied softly, lest the loamy Lazarus hear. 'Your lust is immeasurable ... Quiet ...'

With a disgraced face, Magdalena walked away.

"Thirsty, go forth and all without payment!" continued I, quoting the great words of the prophet Isaiah. 'Go and take without silver and pay for the wine and the milk!'

And I added the threat that every new-fangled prop of Israel was so fond of, even the most talentless: 'Hear, hear! The walls of Jerusalem will fall!'

To add to all this, I taught him a few phrases to reinforce my authority: 'He who does not believe in Jesus had better tie a millstone around his neck and drown himself in the depths of the sea' and 'Abandon your possessions, for the first will be last, the last will be first, as Jesus of Nazareth told us'.

I felt like a father teaching his child the first words, so I added to the doll's humble vocabulary, "I love you, my father.

At last I say in a commanding tone, "Lazarus, get up and walk!

He came to the government and sat down. I put a hood over his head. Put sandals on his feet.

By this time a huge crowd had gathered behind the fence around the house of residents of Bethania, among whom I saw rabbis and even some soldiers. The situation was dangerous, I came to be accused of anything and everything. I had to get the doll to the people as quickly as possible.

Lazarus stood up and made his way to the door with a slow, awkward gait. Out of nowhere, the black kitten emerged and began to play with the son of his robe, but the blind, unfeeling Lazarus got on top of him. The kitten howled shrilly and shot out like a little black shadow.

Lazarus walked out after him.

Fox's beard and coppery gaze were hidden from view by the shadow of the hood. Moreover no lazarus grievously stooped, he hid his face, therefore everything looked perfectly human.

My pupils, Magdalene and our other women stood beside the house with Martha, who at the sight of the doll immediately lost consciousness, sank to the ground, Andreas narrowly catching her and preventing her from landing on her head. Everyone stiffened in amazement.

Without paying attention to him, Lazarus stalked toward the gate, while I climbed the stairs, toward the roof of the house, to better watch the event.

The loamy Lazarus opened the gate, or rather, gave such a powerful push against it with his hands that the lock broke. When the crowd saw this, they fearfully became free.

'Glory be to Jesus!" sounded his voice, as if it came from the bowels of the earth. 'I am Lazarus! The walls of Jerusalem will fall! Go and take attic silver and pay for wine and milk!'

As night fell, Lazarus moved through the crowd with a heavy pace, casting a long shadow even more impressive than himself. I was ecstatic, feeling like the creator of new life, unspiritual admittedly, but still, life! In the end, everything that had form was also alive, according to Aristotle.

'Jesus, I want you! Go away, slut! Not now! Your lust is immeasurable!" sailed Lazarus forth pouring out his words, and I was amazed at the strength of his clay throat. 'Silence! The walls of Jerusalem will fall! Anathema!

"Lazarus has risen and become a prophet!" someone shouted.

'Whoever does not believe in Jesus ... A millstone around his neck!" roared Lazarus the whole street. 'Tell you truly!'

'Gives us permission to pay for wine to grab,' sounded another voice. 'Let us go to the mall! Lazarus, go ahead of us!'

With much noise, the crowd closed around him. I was afraid that I accidentally tore off an arm or turned his head, but everything remained amazingly firm. The loamy Lazarus walked down the street to an unknown dog. He made blessing gestures with his right hand, which was strange because I hadn't taught him that. Probably carnal and loam people acted similarly in similar circumstances, according to the laws of universal mechanics. The movement of the loamy Lazarus was awkward, but full of dignity, and I thought he could very well become a clergyman. He knew nothing and thought of nothing, only uttered a few phrases, but in his body resided the life-giving passions, with underneath, the stubbornness, and that was the most important thing for a clergyman.

Martha came, Judas took her into the house. Andrew and Philippus came up to me, on the roof. The people continued to push around Lazarus noisily, and the procession got further and further out of sight.

'Jesus, that's amazing,' Andreas said. 'I have always believed in you; you are truly a great teacher! Tell me, can this op move on for a long time?'

''A few weeks, I think,'' I said, ''but if he goes out in the sun, he'll dry out and fall apart faster.'' By the way, if he gets water there regularly ... Just to be on the safe side, I taught him to say ''splash me with water.'' And if someone is smart enough to look under his hoodie and erase the first letter of the word met on his forehead, he's been right there, he turns into a motionless pile of lories and loam, because the word truth then turns into the word death.'

'Master, you could create a perfect minnar,' Phillippus said. 'The most beautiful in the world, always vigorous and blessed, who will never give up.'

'You can create a legion of lovers and thereby subdue the empire novel,' I replied. 'Because only love is capable of withstanding a regular army. You will see how yet another Pompei will be astonished when it sees our army!'

We shot out laughing.

It had grown dark. The murmur of the crowd hushed in the distance. It occurred to me that I had released the new Lazarus into the world and in doing so had immediately severed the bond with him. Similarly, God, if he existed, lost the bond with every newborn human being. Whereas children, if they had barely learned to walk, went away from their parents forever. Yes, between all of us the abyss gaped.

That is why I always deliver family ties and family life with contempt. It saves me from having recently come to separate the husband from his father, the daughter from her mother, and a bride from her groom. Suddenly I had taken someone else's bride literally on the eve of her wedding. That had been in Masada. Incidentally, she had returned home shortly thereafter, when she did understand that I could give her neither peace nor prosperity.

That evening we all dined together in the dining room. I sat in the chair of the gentleman of the house who had moved under the fig tree. Helping Martha, because she did not understand why her revived husband had left. When everyone put themselves to sleep, Magdalene and I took possession of the room there in which I had created the mud man. I had drunk a lot of wine, was excited and almost happy. From the scraps of string I had needed to make the doll, I made a kind of harness and put it around Magdalena's head. She sat down on all fours. We had intercourse for a long time on the wooden bed whose wicker mats still smelled a little of the deceased and were covered in clay, but I felt only the equally firm and willing flesh of a wonderfully voluptuous woman, she clamped the rope between her teeth, pressed it into the corners of her mouth, her clitoris swelled blissfully, I massaged it with my finger, with faster and faster movements, and then poured my seed into her, with a cry of joy, with a feeling that I had died and was born again, for the eternal true life, obscured by nothing.

In my ecstasy, I was probably equal to God at that moment. After all, what Philon of Alexandria saw ecstasy as the gateway to heaven, and this man I believed, because he was not only sagacious but also one of the richest Jews in Egypt. Moreover, he believed that the Jewish God should not belong to the Jews alone, and that was a proposition as bold as it was truly astute. I had always wanted to meet Filon and talk with him, but would he have wanted to descend to me, a vagabond who had never even taken a step across the threshold of a yeshiva? Maybe so... I believed he knew something about the logos that I did not, even though I healed people using it and came to make a mud doll move.

We stayed in Martha's house for four days. She kept wanting to look for her Lazarus, to bring him back home, but I tried to talk her out of it by pointing out that he was now serving God exclusively. I assured Martha that her husband still loved her and had not forgotten his resurrection, but that he was not stupidly on a very, very important mission.

At that point, the loamy Lazarus was already far from Bethania, with a group of people behind him who considered themselves his disciples.

If you added to that time a little bit of menstrual blood, the artificial man would be amenable and accurate. If you added the saliva of a rabid dog, you would get a brave soldier. The blood of a bat made him fast and agile, while the juice of hazel with the oil of mint made him diligent and obedient. Powdered earthworms helped him make the right decisions and even be a little cunning. Hyena dung pounded with coke made him considerate and honorable. There were many other ingredients that imparted different properties to an infant stream. If I once had a fine workshop, in a secluded spot, and the opportunity to work quietly, I might come and make a perfect doll.

The ink with which I wrote this excerpt was prepared from kufi, roasted acorns, vitriol, alum, dried leeches and gum arabic, over which a special prayer was then said by a smiling moon. This was a precautionary measure. The method of bringing matter to life, as here set forth, is dangerous in the hands of a fanatical believer or mentally ill person, because he can create and lead an army, by which he expands the territory of his insane world, and not the territory of love. The properties of this ink are such that such people see here only rules from sacred Scripture, innocent and useless, because everyone knows them.

Chapter 37 - Dafei

The sanhedrin found out immediately that I had raised Lazarus from the dead. No wonder too, Jerusalem was only 15 stadia from Bathania, and the people he rushed to deliver the glad tidings. There was perhaps nothing so stirring as the possibility of resurrecting someone, but almost no one spoke up about what that was good for. What did a man want to preserve, if, as Herofiles observed, his body consisted of three-fourths of exuberance? The rest was a tragic tangle of words, passions, habits, fear of the future and the hope that unites all that, but which as such does not exist itself.

I gave up on the people, and to may that be of loam and rags, it was the great mass enough. We hope for rules, the world rules. This, then, was exactly what so alarmed the Sanhedrin. High priest Caiaphas in all his Levites together could do nothing new, they were only concerned with the endless sacrifices in the temple, pouring oil into the candlesticks and taking from the faithful silver sickles for the holy treasury. They could not plead a living word and customers clung to power like a dying graybeard clings to the edge of his deathbed with cramped fingers. They had tired God with the uniformity and meaninglessness of their worship.

I think they failed to get rid of me as quickly as shit because the Sanhedrin is never united. The Sadducees took the most places in it, and they blood hated the Pharisees, on whom people were more inclined and who held written tradition for God's word. The Sadducees played the card of Rome, the Pharisees that of the gray. And then there stood these venerable people, the orators who represented the interests of the rich merchants, the landowners and the aristocracy. They fought among themselves, as always, with each other, while a force tried to get on their side. Thus high priest Caiaphas also decided to act, although I don't know why, because his power was unassailable. Probably he had decided to fool around with me a bit and see what came of it.

It went like this. We left the house of Lazarus in Bethania and made our way to Jerusalem. It was the middle of the day. The crowd accompanying us had thinned out considerably. I understood that I had to enter the city as a triumphator, as the man who personified the expectations of the people. I became excited as I thought of how to conduct the dialogue with the Sanhedrin, how to present my reforms... I could already see myself in the huge rooms of the provincial perfect, he and I discussing how we would reform Jerusalem, for the transformation of the land of Israel should begin in the most important city.... In my mind I was talking to the prefect about the fact that the death of the cross should be abolished with immediate effect and forever, how I explained that in place of the yeshivas new, free schools for everyone should be created there you could learn philosophy, mathematics, astronomy and medicine.... The prefect, though astonished, would have also agreed with all my proposals, for he was an educated Roman, not a headstrong elder of the sanhedrin... I saw a Jerusalem without slaves, with legions of trees along the streets, there were no discontented people, and those in need called, came to get assistance. The whole land of Israel would thus take on a different appearance, and the Romans would be amazed at how magnificent and yet thought their distant province was.

I really believed in that.

If I could perform a small miracle from time to time, if the Lord God had given me that gift, like a scroll of mezuzah in the army, then I would give the Jews the miracle of a new Kingdom. Perhaps my life would not be long enough for that, but I would cast the grain into the earth.

I did not want to think that on the stones of Judea nothing could grow but sparse thistles.

I wandered along the dusty road with my students, who were sad because they were scared. As always, we were surrounded by a mess of troublemakers. It was. A multitude of people were moving along the road, some to and others from Jerusalem. Some solidly dressed Jews pointed fingers and complained at me. A Roman patrol passed by, whose headman watched our standing with great suspicion.

Two stadia from Jerusalem there was a tavern along the road with the flag out, signaling that the owner had gotten a new couch in, and I decided to drink some of that, on that it would calm me down a bit before the entry into the city. Would soothe, humble and reflect. There was nothing better for me at that moment than wine. With me is the fire of the prophet, the volcanic gift of the earth that strengthens spiritual balance and purifies the spiritual ether.

I stepped into the tavern with my disciples and women; the large crowd remained outside. Or rather, an old man from among my followers, leaning on his cane, wanted to slip in behind us, but the owner of the establishment kicked him right back out, he smelled too hard and was too dirty.

One brought us chilled wine. It was excellent wine, from Eshkola. I drank two goblets and the ghosts of unrest soaked off me. My disciples also felt more confident. Andreas and Simon started arguing where best to stay in Jerusalem, mattheus took out his book rolls and sat down to write, while Magdalene secluded herself with the owner of the tavern to settle the bill, for the wine and some food, with her love, thus sparing our resources. I did not balk at it and was not at all jealous, by now I was above all these petty earthly passions, and besides, what could such a fat-bellied innkeeper with his little zajien change Magdalena's fate, when she had already given herself to thousands of men before?

After us, a tall man in attire as expensive as it was sober entered the tavern: a light chiton of twined sea silk, a dark brown silk coat. Hanging from his belt, in a silver scabbard, was a thin interpreter with a hilt set with emeralds.

He dropped his gaze past the tavern's visitors, came over to our table and sat down across from me. He was middle-aged. Jew. A petite, clean-shaven face with a narrow nose. Sharp gray eyes.

'You are Jesus, aren't you? I want to discuss something important with you,' he said. 'But in private, let your people go away.'

'Those are my students, I trust them,' I replied. 'Let them stay mag. Who are you?

'All right then,' he agreed, attic changing facial expression. 'My name is Dafei, I am the personal assistant to high priest Joseph Caiaphas. I am here by order of his. He knows about you and about the fact that you are on your way to Jerusalem from Bethania, where you supposedly raised someone from the dead. I don't know what happened there, but all people with common sense understand that it is deception, albeit extremely ingenious. Thus, His Edo venerable wants to make a deal with you. Tomorrow morning he will appear before the people with a dutiful word on the occasion of the dawn of Passover. He offers you 30 aurei whether you will join him in facing the people and calling all the itinerant prophets of Israel to Burrell. You must persuade him to return to the womb of the Law, offer sacrifices in the temple and stop making people's heads spin. All first you must thereby pacify those who pretend to be Jesus. And if possible also the other false Messiahs. Do you understand what I mean?

'Yes,' I replied calmly, even though internally I was boiling with anger. 'And that's what that's good for?'

'To end the disturbances,' Dafei explained. 'In Jerusalem and an entire Judea, there is unrest. People are dying. Even in Galilee there is mutiny. Caesarea is taken by disciples of some madman ... The Romans are preparing a punitive expedition there. The venerable Caiaphas know that your word will help to calm tempers... Though I personally think otherwise.'

'Why should I act together with Caiaphas? I am entering Jerusalem and did convince the Romans to cancel their punitive expedition,' I said.

'Don't be stupid, Jesus,' dafei said, equally emotionless. 'The high priest will pay you 30 aurei. I have them with me. And I am ready to give them to you immediately.'

It was a lot of money that not one itinerant doctor would turn down.

"Master, let's think about the proposal!" said Matthew excitedly, "I think it's very wise.

'Shut up, Matthew,' I said.

The faces of the other disciples also showed a desire to accommodate Caiaphas. But I understand that if I agreed, I would never again become a daily great teacher, but at best an errand boy to carry out orders from the sanhedrin. Once I became a silent official, I could no longer be free. Money would bind me stronger than chains. No one would kiss my dogs if I entered a spot. But most importantly Bas, I felt I would lose the gift of healer. I also understood that Caiaphas came to increase his authority considerably if he had managed to tame such a wild animal as me. What kind of aurei were they? I thought. With the full weight? Hadn't the head of Tiberias been erased from them? Or had they been newly minted, under Augustus?

At that moment, the horny and satisfied Magdalena returned to the table. She had another jug then with her. With a smile, the owner of the tavern stepped in after her.

"This wine is also complimentary, guys!" he said.

Caiaphas' envoy eyed Magdalene intently.

'Woman, Are you not condemned to drown in Ashkelon, in a lead coffin? Your name is Mary, isn't it?

'Mee, you're mistaken, good man!" she laughed, drinking the wine right out of the jug. 'I remind everyone of someone else! But who are you, handsome?'

The envoy did not answer. For a while he and I looked at each other silently. Then I said poutily, "Dafei, let's walk outside for a while, and I'll tell you my decision.

Something of surprise slipped across Dafei's face. We got up from the table and walked under the blue sky of Israel to the crowd waiting for me. My disciples and the women came after us. Magdalena with the wine jug in her hand.

'Listen carefully, poor slob of Caiaphas!" cried I. 'I am going to Jerusalem to give the people their freedom! 12 legions of angels the Lord God will send me, and I am not afraid of you! The heavenly hosts be with me!'

Dafei recoiled from me and his face paled, became even leaner and stern. The crowd began to murmur joyfully. Dafei put his hand on the hilt of his dagger.

'They want me to act like an Indian elephant, plowing, and thirsting, and stamping its paws on the ground under the sacred shepherd's whistle! Nothing will come of that, nothing!" I continued, turning to the crowd. 'From now on you will see in me the son of man, seated on the right hand of the power of heaven! With an iron broom I will sweep away all the dirt from Jerusalem!'

"So truly it is, Jesus!" agreed a petite, pimple-faced youth who had followed us from Bethania and seen the clay lazarus at the gate of his wife's house.

'All hope is in Him alone! On Jesus we build,' an old woman began to lament. 'He is our teacher, our precious treasure, our own blood! And if anyone dares to touch him with a finger, he gets it with this very stick!' And she menacingly showed Dafei her stick.

'Tell Caiaphas he can choke on that gold!' ' I said hoarsely, having lost my voice a little from all the shouting. 'Did you understand me, Dafei? And when he runs out of that gold, then the silver may stay down his throat!'

I dashed off this speech, but I must confess that at that moment I thought nothing evil about Caiaphas, nor about his envoy. I had only very precisely gauged the mood of the crowd, in the crowd wanted me to look out and be categorical. I wanted to gather around me as many people as possible who would defend me in order to avoid arrest.

'Jesus, take back your words,' Dafoe spoke calmly, 'let's go back to the tavern and talk about it again. Maybe you misunderstood me.'

'Go hey and don't come any closer to me than a stone's throw!" I replied. 'And let the whole sanhedrin know that they are not people but decorated coffins! Off you go!

The crowd began to rant excitedly.

But as soon as Dafei's view disappeared, I immediately regretted not having accepted Caiaphas' offer. As if the spirit of contradiction that ignited my hand suddenly no longer clouded my mind. My disciples stood away with a dismayed face, and everyone else around us just wanted food and merriment. But food we didn't get for him, nor was merriment in sight. And after my furious tirade, no more people joined us, either, in this not very trusting crowd. I thought of the aurei of Caiaphas, and it became even more bitter to me.

Chapter 38 - The last night

As we entered Jerusalem, only then did I understand how I had erred in rejecting Caiaphas' proposal. The day before, protests and disturbances had broken out, organized by the Sikarians and ruthlessly put down by order of the prefect; his legionaries had killed several dozen disgruntled

or imprisoned. The sanhedrin took the opportunity to show its single-mindedness and called for the death penalty to be handed out to those who, in the opinion of its members, posed a threat to the spiritual authorities: the freewheeling prophets, healers and scholars. Even soothsayers and innocent dream interpreters fell under the knot of the law enforcers. Warriors of Judea caught the latter along with Roman legionnaires and dried and over to the petty court that quickly concocted one death sentence after another. Mistakenly, even some pilgrims from the countryside, who had been all too talkative, were rounded up and put to death.

Among the unfortunates was also a single Jesus of Nazareth who revealed his true name under torture. In addition, a woman named Mary had turned up in the city who pretended to be the mother of Jesus of Nazareth, and she was only not apprehended, because this kind of madness was considered comical and not a danger to those in power. She became so much like an immaculate and beneficent Isis and gathered around her women who blindly believed her, even from distinguished relatives. Judging from the description, this was my mother. Seeing her then was the last thing I wanted, though. I think the feeling would be mutual.

There was no question of preaching somewhere in a crowded place. The wine fumes had faded and I fell prey to a torturous fear. We had to find somewhere good to go, come to rest in Jerusalem and leave as soon as possible. In the western part of the city, mattheus led us to a house where a hospitable merchant lived, the owner of a number of stores selling salt, crockery, jewelry boxes, knives and all manner of small items, indispensable in daily life. He was a tall, wrinkled gray-haired man with two colors of eyes, one green and one blue. I had met such people before, but it amazed me that he had pupils of different sizes, as if one looked into the light and the other peered into the dark. The old man lives with his young, taciturn Syrian wife, a voluptuous girl with a lush curly forest and a face as good as it is silly.

It was the last evening we were all together. We sat on cushions and reed mats at a long, low table of brightly painted wood. The practitioner's wife, with the help of a maidservant, had prepared us a simple meal.

We drank a lot of wine, and I fell prey to bad premonitions. My students were also in a minor mood, only our wives chatting carefree with the merchant's wife.

"How are things going?" I asked the old man out of politeness.

'Well, Jesus, yesterday I bought from nomads very cheaply a batch of palm-fiber woven baskets and sold them for double,' he replied.

'To avoid falling into the clutches of the sanhedrin, we must be too cunning for them: we all take a rope and we hang ourselves,' Simon spoke, breathing a sigh. Laughter sounded in unison.

Only in Matthew's case did not a smile come off, he had his parchments, his papyrus and his dead ordinary pieces of rough leather spread out on the table, made some corrections to them tenderly writing out something in the net muttering to himself.

'Mattheus, stop that,' I said, 'drink your wine, sink your teeth into a flatbread with oil and look at me, I am your teacher, and around you are your friends. Our business is in bad shape, and we know you will never see me again.'

Matthew reluctantly detached himself from his writing and said, "Jesus, it doesn't matter what happens to us next, because I am writing the book in which we will stand before the face of eternity, and I am finishing that text as it pleases me. Forgive me, Master, but the nagids were right when they said that you no longer belong to yourself. You belong to history, and I know what I am doing.'

'Matthew!" I exclaimed, slapping the table with my flat hand; everyone was silent. 'Who Dean you? Not God, not the emperor, not me. You think your zajk with written texts! That's your unfeeling leather god! The moths in time will eat him! You are mad! Look at me, at Judas, at Simon... Look, we...'

Matthew let an otherworldly gaze pass over everyone and delved back into his work.

I understood the futility of talking to him, poured myself a cup of sweet, strained wine and clocked it away in one sitting.

'Will you stop talking like that,' Magdalena said. 'Shall the girls and I make you merry? Mr. Owner, do you have a tambourine and a cymbal? Do you have a tympanum? Then give those soon!'

The women set into a joyful song, Magdalene threw off her clothes and exposed her tawny body, causing great confusion to the owner's wife, and plunged into a furious dance. Magdalena threw off her clothes and exposed her tawny body, causing great confusion to the owner's wife, and plunged into a furious dance. Magdalena threw her head into her neck, languidly closed her eyes and struck the tambourine, shaking in tune with her pronged breasts with the big brown stars of nipples, and Terpsischore would have been jealous of her neighbor's grace. As I watched her, I became aroused. The black triangle of close hair under her belly set me on fire as of old.

We drank more, but no one got drunk, the volcanic power of the wine emanating from the earth no longer having any effect on us, as if by the will of a hopeless scribe we had become a twisted copy of ourselves. But no, no, I knew they existed, and each of us was a pulsating red book of flesh, fortified by white bones, and that flesh had to be redeemed.

'Listen, dear people,' I said, 'if we all went out of town together, we would irrevocably attract attention and be arrested. Therefore, early tomorrow, in the hour between sleeping and waking, you must leave this house one by one, walking in different directions in the city via different rungs. I will go first. We will meet again in the valley of Gethsemane, in the olive garden, where it is usually deserted and there is an abandoned house where we can hide from prying eyes. Then we dissolve into the crowds on the road to Jericho and go to Galilee, hide temporarily in the mountains of the north, then move to Damascus, via Iturea, I think tetrarch Herod Philippus bell has something else on his mind than the manhunt for prophets. I have a good friend in Damascus, we will get shelter there, and even though it will be a new place for us, don't worry, I know what to do.

My words received a lukewarm reception from my students, but no one went against the plan. They remained seated at the table, with the gentleman of the house with the two-colored eyes, but I walked to our assigned room, a long pipe-drawer, like the coffin of a refrain, to go to bed a little early. We had a difficult day ahead of us.

Magdalena came up behind me, walked to the wall of the room, pressed herself against it with her palms and offered me her behind. Her movements were light and harmonious, as always. I forcefully chased my zajien in, moved and poured my seed into her wide, hot womb, and without a word Magdalena went back to drinking.

With a blade of obsidian, I shaved off my long beard, turned off the lamp, set it on a protruding stone in the wall and lay down on the wicker mats, under a sheepskin that lay nearby. It made me sad. I had told everyone for so long that I knew the way to eternal life, but did it really exist? Was it even there? I concluded: if I make it out alive, I will leave for the north and never take another step toward Jerusalem. I have played enough with that fire. I'll take another name, become a silent physician. And maybe I can get the Roman citizenship bell, to start a new life, with a clean slate; after all, I'm not an old man yet and I can still be of service to the empire.

Judas stepped into the room and silently lay down beside me. As I fell asleep, I was suddenly acutely aware of the danger that threatened me, for I could be captured and put to death. I thought about how nice it would be to become a bird to leave Jerusalem undetected, but only a clearly large mag was able to do that.

Chapter 39 - The raven

The old cedar tree towered up at the edge of a circle, its roots rising above the red stone soil that continued to crumble with each passing year. I never walked the earth like the people, who cut down almost all the trees in the valley. I only came down to earth sometimes, to take what was rightfully mine, and then lived again in the skies and in the trees that could become a home for me piece by piece, and at any time, as long as they were not at least possessed by one of my black friends.

The cedar had a thick naked Stan and a full cap of branches and its top. He was older than me, even though I can still remember the time when Judea was ruled by Queen High Priest Aristobulus, renowned for putting his mother in prison (I once saw him at an outdoor ceremony). One of the branches of the cedar, a long crooked one, pointed in the direction of Jerusalem, like a blessing hand, and there I sat on it, a gaaf from the genus Jenim.

It was evening and the walls of Jerusalem in front of me were covered by smoke, from early morning the mountains of garbage that people dragged from the city and its surroundings to the Valley of Hinnom were smoldering. Food scraps, old lorries, old broken things, manure, carcasses of cremated animals, and sometimes the bodies of people, murdered and silently transported by garbage cart to the dump. Along the slope facing the city, the filth flowed into the valley. The garbage dried out and was set on fire on the morning of the sixth day.

This massive fire repeated itself every week. Like many of my peers, I could always find something to eat among all the garbage, and I was outraged that the fire, leading up to the night of the Sabbath, consumed almost everything. Why did people bring God this fire sacrifice? People are indomitable, they destroy everything they cannot use, and what they cannot use, they hate. Thus they hate me even more strongly and curse, when they cannot hit me with a stone.

The garbage valley is my dwelling place, a place where thieves and poisoners meet, an arena for fencing and distributing stolen goods, often the last refuge for lepers chased away from everywhere, while the very cheapest prostitutes dragged their unfussy husbands here. Large groups of hyenas roamed here, legions of rats came rushing here from the city and returned there again, while children of beatings played games there trying to humiliate each other. I ruled over all that, flying over my territory and paying attention to every little thing, every movement, and storing everything in my memory. Isn't it great when there's still something on a bone that hasn't quite spoiled, or when you suddenly find a flat bread prepared with oil in a pile of old lories?

Everyone who came there was unwittingly in my power, in the shadow of my wings, even without knowing it. From time to time I could predict people's fate, but out of inability they saw only a bird in me. Although a dying person did see the sign of death in me, when I perched near him.

A sharp eye, an excellent memory and a quick understanding, behold the greatest treasures, well, and of course it is then desirable that you do not have broken wings.

I did not like the fruit of which the surrounding gardens were always so teeming. I was attracted to animal and fatty foods, and the most delicious, the tastiest, was, of course, a human fruit. When an anxious mother brought her illegitimately born or foolishly unwanted child, who could still squawk and squirm, wrapped in a baai cloth in silence to the valley of Hinnom, I was the first to find it and peck at the tender flesh with my beak.

That was not simply stealing hunger. When I held the infant's head firmly in my claws, I pecked at its face and its mouth longing for milk, and at that moment time itself was subservient to me, I prove to the heavens that a bird could also be endowed with power over man, and then my black feathers were equal to the gown of a judge.

It is freedom of action and clarity of thought that bring birds, like humans, closer to the truth. I didn't trust anyone, because I knew the world all too well, and not myself well enough: suppose at some point I got seduced by something, showed compassion and, gone? It was better to always be on your guard.

The wind changed direction the biting smoke covered my cedar tree, I shuffled to the end of my branch, it bent, I jumped off, but did not immediately control my wings to gain momentum, and for a few moments I hovered, only to rise higher and higher on the warm air currents without haste. To gain altitude I only had to spread my wings occasionally, and so I glided forward on the harsh waves of the wind, trying to conserve my strength as much as possible. I flew in the direction of Jerusalem. From the side the evening sun shone brightly, and long shadows drew out everything that was not hidden from view in the haze: roads, narrow strips of the ground, the vineyards on the terraces.

I ascended still higher and saw almost the entire city, surrounded by an irregular stone wall. It lay on two hills, divided by a valley into which rows of houses descended from both sides. It was a labyrinth of streets, almost devoid of plant growth, every spot was built on, and only in the yard of a high-powered person did the greenery stand out from the tops of cypress and pine trees. The streets were full of people, cattle and wagons; below there was no end to the bustle, but the sound of it did not drive them to the height at which I found myself. In doing so, I could distinguish not only every person below, but even a skittish mouse.

In the rays of the setting sun lay the shining bath of Shiloach, carved into the rock face. I wanted to drink, but I could not quench my thirst, because the bath was teeming day and night with people fetching water or washing themselves.

Down below, the Dirt Gate and the long, steeply sloping street that led to the temple drifted by, and I descended to a small tower, topped by a rainwater catchment, a stone bowl. I perched on the edge of it.

This boulder-built tower suddenly appeared to me as a pedestal, while I saw myself as the statue on it, but each sculpture was dead and unmoving, and I guested a few times to prove to myself and the world that I was alive.

I was proud of my wings and tail, my powerful legs and my strong beak. The body of a bird, of course, is more perfect than the equally colossal and clumsy body of a man, capable only of walking, jumping and cutting down trees, but in doing so, it is man (by some oil-dumb plan!) who is better able to subject the world to his rule.

It hadn't rained in ages, and there was very little water at the bottom of the com. I jumped in, turned my head so that the water naturally ran into my beak and drank to the fullest.

From the roof of one of the temple buildings came the sound of silver trumpets, the Levites announced the beginning of the evening service, it was the beginning of Passover, the people were preparing for the feast.

I made my way down and flew over a street immersed in bustle, smells and city traffic. Clothes of all colors flashed by, wagon wheels rattled across the pavement, horses' hooves, camels propelled by sticks uttered shrill cries, the footsteps and voices of thousands of people merged into an anonymous murmur.

The flat stone roofs of the houses formed another level of Jerusalem, invisible from below there the people did their mundane things: they practiced their craft there, dried the laundry, rocked the children, prepared the food, and a great throng of wisps of smoke rises above them; people slept there, had conversations, and copulated, if the place could not be seen from outside, but I saw everything.

At the end of the street stood the prison building; I made altitude again and flew over it.

Once I almost perished, when, out of curiosity, I had perched on a stone ledge in front of a window of this prison, behind which a murderer awaited his sentence. I knew he had not killed for money, but for pleasure, and had dishonored his deadly victims, and I liked that about him, because he acted toward people as they deserved, even though he himself was one of them. He hardly got to eat. Starving, he tried to catch birds, using a sturdy wire: he put the lesson on the ledge in front of the window, sprinkled dust on it and crumbs of bread. Pigeons became his diet. At the last moment I heard a suspicious rumor and flew up, otherwise the loop would have tightened around my leg. I flew to the market, stole a coin from the stall of a yawning merchant and brought it in my beak to the captive. When he saw what I had done, he laughed and stretched his hands out to me through the bars. I knew he could exchange the coin with the guard for food, if the guard would not cheat him. However, I didn't do it out of compassion: I liked stealing money, but I couldn't buy anything for it, and by giving it to the murderer I still get to use it.

What I especially enjoyed was stealing coins from the changers at the temple, only to watch their wrath from a safe distance. These people madly awakened a special hatred in me. On one occasion I watched as a man came to start shouting and turning over their tables with neatly displayed piles of silver and copper coins, and it was a pleasant sight.

I flew over the ravine and came above the neighborhood where the rich people lived. When I saw on the marble wall around a balcony a tri-colored cat sprawled out, I silently sailed from the side of his tail toward her and in my flight deliberately touched his horn with my wing. The cat shot upright, almost tumbled down, made a high back and blew something after me full of hatred.

In this neighborhood I often found rich food scraps, if, of course, they had not previously been nicked by servants or cats.

It was always a great comfort to me to sow confusion in the lives of people, and of animals who were on good terms with him. Once I had accomplished a feat, of which I am still proud: I pecked at the crown of the ancient King Herod, nicknamed the great one! He was 69 years old and knew he was going to die. One morning, servants carried him out onto one of the balconies of his palace in Jerusalem, where, plagued by pain in his belly and feet, he pondered the scenario for the national mourning for him. On a rug next to his seat, a boy sat a man playing a sad melody, on the kinnor. Invisible, from the side of the sun, I dropped from the sky like a stone, ducked under the large fan that a servant held up behind his back, and pecked the king as hard as I came in the bald head that was covered in brown age spots. The youthful musician guilty of fright rose to his feet, dropped his kinnor to the ground, bodyguards stormed towards us, but I deftly dodged their lances and flew under the arches and between the pillars to the other side of the balcony and a moment later was already floating in complete safety over the city.

I think my artifice had cost the lives of some servants and guards, for even while he was still healthy, Herod had had his sons and one of his wives put to death, and the burdens of old age had not made his character any milder. However, every act of a bird had a clear intention and conforms to an ancient law. What was behind this act? Well, this: I had become the king's daughter. Although it was not for long, I still kept forgetting the pain in my body and limbs by using my beak to divert his attention to the aching cock; moreover, mothers in oblivion are each other's brother and sister.

And then, thanks to me, the strings of the kinnor, as they fell, made a grievous sound that answered the king's melancholy thoughts better than any melody played on purpose.

I did not see Herod on that balcony again. The bell was that an archer kept watch there for a few days after my visit. The king soon moved to Jericho and died there. I flew to see him at his funeral, to accompany him on his final journey, because I too had had a share in his life's journey, and that might have repercussions on the fate of the world, after all, all events ultimately have a basis absolutely no larger than the tip of my beak. From on high I watched as he was carried, on a golden bier, under a purple robe, with the scepter in his hand, into the lap of eternity by his family and his battle-clad army. Probably god, if he existed, watch this funeral procession with me with wide eyes, and days his feathers black.

After passing the empty amphitheater, a few palaces and the praetorium, with the magnificent lances of legionnaires in the square in front, I kept more to the left, with my sights on a tall white tower.

Beyond the city wall was a hill called Golgotha, where capital punishment was regularly carried out. Convicts were usually first beaten off with a flagrum, at the stone tarp next to the courthouse, and then taken to the Hill, firmly tied to a wooden cross which they themselves had to carry. There the naked convicts went through their long agony, due to the heat, breathlessness and injuries inflicted on him with the knot.

I enjoyed making eye contact with him. It was one of the few attractions that were within my reach that had a higher meaning. I asserted my ancient power, that of the bird over man, the power of the original force of nature over human haughtiness, which is as immoderate as it is vicious.

There was no kindness in picking out the eyes of the dead, and you didn't get the chance to do it because with living people, which is why the half-living unlucky people on the cross were best suited for this ritual.

In given time there had been one stonemasonry at the foot of the hill, where white stone was quarried for the construction of the Temple, but now on Golgotha and around it there was a great crowd of crosses with people who had been put to death, and their fly-strewn bodies were in various states of decomposition, but there were at that moment about three fresh and alive, they had been crucified that morning, and they went in a row, facing the western city wall gilded by the evening sun.

Two of them were broad-shouldered, muscular and obviously of great strength, and I thought that they must be bandits, or soldiers who had had something to do with their crimes, which was after all almost the same thing: the former acted only in their own name, while the latter were sent out by some official to sow death and destruction; on top of that you needed strength in both cases, but not reason in either. But the mighty muscles of these two crucified therein now became useless, as did the shriveled seed rows between their legs. One of these crucified ones produced a hoarse sound, unaware of anything, and ready to give up the ghost at any moment, but the other shocked from time to time and bared his teeth, and I felt the waves of glowing hatred emanating from him. What he thirsted for most of all at that moment was revenge against those who had condemned him and were carrying out the death sentence. And he was right. He had maintained his dignity; it was clear that he did not beg for mercy or humble himself.

The two legionnaires who had crucified him were sitting nearby; they had placed a rug on a flat stone, apparently a garment belonging to one of the condemned, and were stacking their food on it: cheese, dried meat, bread and a small leather sack of wine. A little further on, a few women were weeping. There was no one else on the hill.

The third crucified huh, the one in the middle one, doesn't look like a robber or a soldier. His hands were finely groomed and clean, with nails clipped short, he obviously hadn't done any heavy work either, and I inferred that he was a scribe who had turned against the Romans. His face looked familiar, but I could not bring to mind where I had seen him before. From his fearsome neighbor on the cross, who for the time being was also still in his right mind, he was distinguished (I saw that immediately!) by the fact that he had not yet given up hope of salvation. He was a developed man, in his imagination the scenes of a miracle presented themselves to him: those soldiers would take pity on him and take him down from the cross, armed friends would free him and carry him to a secret place to heal his wounds, an invisible power would come to save him... That was written on his face.

That is precisely why I chose him; after all, that was the last thing you could take in a person, his hope.

What also attracted me was the sign hanging on the chest of these scribes with an unusual explanation of what he had done wrong. That sign read:

KING OF THE JEWS

I had seen a king before, and I knew that governing the people of Israel was no easier than that of a jaded cow on which you sat with your legs to one side. Leading the crucified one confirmed this. Probably he had proclaimed himself king, hung a laurel wreath on himself, but could not bear the weight of it, overestimated his powers, as so often happened to people with a star intellect but a weak will, who did not understand that only a cunning tyrant could maintain his power. Even a monkey can put a crown on his head, but his rule will be short-lived.

I flew closer, circling a bit. He opened his eyes. His arms tied to the crossbeam were spread, like slender wings stripped of feathers. The long hair fell in front of his face. He took a short, quick breath, as his posture did not allow him to take a deep breath.

He started shaking his head to chase me away, which I liked.

He let out a cry of fear because he saw in me a sign, at that moment I was the letter of death.

The women began to wail louder and came running. The eldest legionnaire stood up, threatened him with his lance, and they remained standing. One of the women dropped to her knees, gave a howl and began to push the hair out of her head.

I flew closer, took Crossed's head under my wings for a moment and with a precise movement pecked it in the left eye. Crossed once again uttered a cry in blood streaming down his cheek.

With the second peck of my beak I robbed him of his right eye, and at the same moment the sun set for good, thus confirming the correctness of my action: what was a man to do with eyes, if there was nothing to see at night anyway? He groaned and jerked at his crotch, and I was amazed to find that a peculiar kind of joy resounded in his groans. That's good, I thought, that means we're all acting in a force: me, the false King, the soldiers and the setting sun; we all formed one whole, one flesh, as if we had merged into one another in an industrious copulation; we were close to ultimate gratification, and only those silly women, with their whimpering outbursts, spoiled the glorious nature of this scene.

In the twilight I Gijs higher and higher, until I saw all of Jerusalem, whose borders were marked by points of light. The black hills supported the yellow sunset. I turned homeward and below me floated the city, built on the bones of men and birds.

Chapter 40 - The Sacrifice

I got up before dawn, when my students were still sleeping, with their arms around our wives. The purse of money I had earned in Chorazin was in Matthew's knapsack and it was under his head. Of course I should have taken that money, but I thought it would be sad to wake the old man: besides, it would not be free to claim the purse from him, as if I intended to abandon my pupils and take the legs. By the way, I still had some money hidden in my gondola. I kissed the sleeping Judas gently on the lips, gently grabbed my knapsack and walked outside. It was chilly and dark, here and there a light burned under the acroterium of a capital house. I walked down the street to the bottom. There were passersby; the streets of Jerusalem are never, at any time, completely deserted. I put on my hood, to hide my face, and figured that I had done well to shave myself in Roman fashion; after all, a worthless Messiah was unimaginable. I also figured that when I left I hadn't locked the door, but after all, it was impossible to close it from the outside, and I didn't want to wake anyone.

A fat woman passed by with tinkling jewelry, like the owner of a brothel, then two young Jews and an old man with baskets. There was no patrol in sight, so I remained relieved to choose a safe path to the orchard in the valley of Gethsemane. I had to get out of town without attracting attention. The flower gate at the shovel gate did not qualify. Sure, right next to it was a narrow archway through which a person could slip if necessary at any time of day or night, but a walker walking to the valley of Hinnom at night was quite suspicious, and I turn my separate attention to the eastern Commerce Gate, which was open at all hours and there was always a lot of people crowding in there.

The street sloped down and looked out on a poor neighborhood, and more to the left, above a drab accumulation of houses, rose the white walls of the temple, lit by a large number of fires. I remained standing for a few moments, watching, it was as if the temple went between the city and the black sky, like the visible vestibule of eternity. I suddenly saw myself as a little boy who had stepped over the centuries, saw how the earth breathed, how the screens of individual people had become the shadows of generations, and the light dust in the depths of the night sky, which was the gray of my father's beard; I was reminded again of Joseph, and now he was more than a kind and patient stepfather, he expressed in his being the whole sorrow and care of the world.

Someone put a heavy hand on my shoulder; I shuddered and turned around. It was a Roman, a tessarius, I could tell by his belt and helmet. He was with three legionnaires on patrol through the city, and they were now standing around me, holding their shorts along. Escape was no longer possible; resistance was futile. They had on soft sandals, without iron fittings, and so they moved silently, their gray coats of skins making sure they did not stand out in the night.

'Take off your hood,' the tesserarian said in Hebrew.

I obeyed.

'Who are you? What are you doing here?

'My name is Nikolaos,' I answer in Hellenic. 'I am a pilgrim from Antioch. I came to the city to celebrate Passover. I am looking for cheap accommodation. Don't you know where I could stay?'

'Say, speak Hebrew or human language here, I don't understand Greek,' the tesserarian said in exasperation; he was a head taller than me and possessed a gigantic chin bowl on a large, flat face that women probably found attractive.

By human language the tesserarian understood Latin, but I repeated the saying in Hebrew, so as not to appear too developed, and thus, suspicious.

'Look at him, boys,' the tesserarian said to his legionnaires, 'isn't he the man who threw a stone at our Centurion this week, when we broke up the protest feeders in the fish market?'

'He looks like it,' replied one of the soldiers, without looking at me, and I understood where the road to Miranda was: when I took off my hood the tesserarian had seen my glittering signet ring and decided to take it. He knew there was nothing else for me to do, his word and the testimony of one of the legionnaires were enough to throw me in jail, and if they found out who I really was....

Yes, it was a waste of the signet ring, and I had some silver coins in my belt, but it probably didn't work to buy you off of a night patrol with that, most likely they would pick up one as well as the other.

'friend, you bear a heavy responsibility with keeping the peace of the citizens of this city, not this signet ring as a gift from me, wholeheartedly.'

The tertiary quickly put the signet ring into the purse attached to his shoulder belt, and his face changed storage, as if he saw a dear brother in me.

'Thank you, Nikolaos,' he said with a smile. 'My name is Kaeso, remember it. Tesserarian Kaeso Crispus, commander of the night watch. If you ever get stopped by a patrol before the end of the night, tell them you are a personal informant of mine and are investigating a matter of state importance. And everything is for the best. Go ahead.

I took a few steps and looked back again, but the soldiers had already disappeared, as quickly and silently as they had appeared in the shadow of the wall there behind a tall cypress tree darkly stood out and gave off a spicy, sweet needle smell.

Remembering that the oil of the cypress was used by men who wanted to make their coitus last longer, I was stunned by these misguided thoughts and walked on quickly, repeating to myself excitedly: Tesserarian Kaeso Crispus, a matter of state.

At the bread warehouses I had to turn left, but this street, which led past barracks in houses of Levites, was too lively even at night, and I went straight ahead, along a dark, winding street that led over a small water through which all the city's waste flowed into the valley of Hinnom. Sometimes the water ran through a tunnel; sometimes it was open, as in the place where I crossed it via a bridge, gasping for breath from the stench. Behind it began the Tiropeon district; the houses here were shabby, the walls lower, and I was accompanied by the barking of dogs. There was no one in the small streets, which was an encouraging sign.

When I got to the soap factory, I looked left and walked up the hill along a long street with a row of new, as yet uninhabited houses. In one spot, where someone was building a house, among the piles of held bricks stood a young, lone olive tree whose narrow leaves were silvery appointments in the moonlight. It was obstructing construction, but, oddly enough, had not been cut down. I didn't think it would make it long, even though it could last another 500 years or so.

Across the East Gate, I lingered, in the shadow of a house, by a window with closed shutters, through the cracks where light came out. Probably tires inside a family, it was cozy and safe there, while I was terrified. Tomorrow people will celebrate Passover, I thought. They will gather at a joyous table, while I, best possible, will be captured and put to death. I wanted to become a bird again, like in my last dream, and fly over the city wall. I even felt the indignation that I was incapable of doing so. Or, if I could not turn into a bird, then at least into an old woman, able to walk restlessly through the gate. Nobody cared about an old woman. She could be on her way anywhere, perhaps to milk a goat or gather a basket of dry manure for the fireplace....

I saw that at the East Gate there were no Roman guards, but one from Judea, who were both more harsh and greedy. If anything, it was hard to get rid of them. Warriors with lamps and torches on behalf of everyone attentively who went out of the city at that hour at the end of the night.

Yes, it would be good to reach the true height of sorcery and turn into a bird when you wanted to, and then not in a dream, submitting to an unknown world. That was a lot more complicated than making a mud body move or comforting a madman. I hadn't even learned how to direct my own dreams. That was better. I thought I was flying on the wings of prophets, but in reality I was flying on the wings of tombs.

Crucified people probably didn't see much good in their dreams. There was one consolation, dreams never told directly about the future, they always had to be interpreted, sometimes in the most unexpected way, and so I probably hadn't seen myself hanging there on that cross. Probably not...

As I surveyed the gate, I watched as a horseman approached the head of the guard, a Roman deanus. They had a brief conversation, and de Ruyter disappeared around the corner.

Few people favored Jerusalem at that hour: a woman with two children, a few strokes with a hoe, for their work in the fields. Another Roman soldier passed by on horseback.

But one by one load wagons and heavily loaded donkeys did drive into the city, traders from the countryside brought their wares to the Jerusalem market, rushed into the squares to take those most advantageous spots.

I took off my hoodie, straightened my back and walked to the gate looking calm, but with a bated breath of fear, with my knapsack slung over my shoulder. It seems like it was easier for a rich plowman to enter the Kingdom of Heaven than for me to get out of this city with my flat bag.

There were five guards standing there. The night was coming to an end, they were obviously tired, they wanted to eat and sleep and were sullen. Their movements were slow.

I was already under the archway, pressing myself against the wall to let a woman with a jug on her shoulder through, when I was called by one of the bathhouse Bert, "Hey, you there, with that knapsack, halt!

I obeyed.

A twosome approached me. One had a lamp in his hand; he ~did~ it up and illuminated my countenance. His right hand was resting on the bronze vest of his sword, shaped like a lion's head. The other, the head of the guard, was small in stature, looking Pieter out of his eyes and had a short beard. They each wore a leather helmet, covered with round metal plates like shakes. From their faces and their accent, I understand they were Edomites.

"Where are you going? Add the head of the guard, and he yawned. He stood nearby, and I smelled his bad breath; he had something on his stomach or a rotten tooth.

What was I supposed to do? What was I supposed to say? Which lie sounded the most convincing? I was flustered and couldn't concentrate, all my powers of persuasion had suddenly disappeared like snow in the sun, all my strength was exhausted. I felt vulnerable as never before. If I had had a dagger up my sleeve at that moment, I would have decided to kill him and then dissolve into darkness beyond the gate. They slept... Stabbing the main man's dagger in the lower abdomen, giving the second Warrior as he drew his sword a tale of a kill... And taking the legs....

'I Am on my way to the Harcha-Zejtin Cemetery,' I heard my own voice, sounding quite confident. 'I want to visit my father's grave because of the holiday.'

'You're lying,' said the head of the guard promptly.

For a few seconds we were silent, looking at each other. I thought perhaps I should refer to tesserarian Kaeso Crispus, but that would be odd, since I had already mentioned that Cemetery, and an unknown Roman soldier would not be an authority for him either.

'But I can still tell by your shaved head that you are a robber and a murderer,' the small, hawkish male added. 'So where are you going?'

'To the cemetery.'

"We're all going to the cemetery," he chuckled, and a little softer he asked, "Do you have any money on you?

'Yes,' I said, glad I had held back some silver; the precious metal once again opened the way to my salvation.

"And what would you do with that in a graveyard? He asked. 'I can take it into custody for you and give it back to you when you return.'

'Thank you, that's a great idea, because soon I'm going to lose it on the road, and there's scum running around town too,' I said, and I unbuckled my belt, took out six circles and gave them to him. I didn't have a cent left.

'And what else do you have on you, suspicious man?' ' He asked, adding, 'They're currently all over town looking for a rioter named Jesus. Do you know that one?

'I have heard of him, but have never seen him,' I replied, and to finally be rid of this head of the mat I took the book of Nikolaos of Damascus from my knapsack and reached for the shirt saying, 'From this book you can learn how to turn rusty iron into gold using words, take it, I know it by heart anyway.'

"Oh, thank you!" he said, genuinely delighted. 'I love books. What language is it in? In Hellenic? Pity, I know almost no Hellenic, but at home my wife will read it aloud, I have a very educated wife. Well then, go on, friend, go on, visit your father.... A good thing...'

Once through the gate I was able to burst into jubilation, and I stood and watched with a satiated smile as people drove their loss into the city. How little you sometimes needed to be happy, just leaving Jerusalem behind. Preferably forever. But then I immediately understood that I had turned into a beggar, the guard had taken everything from me, even my favorite book. Of course, I had given it myself, but there was no other way... I was seized by anger, after which a new wave of despair washed over me, and I almost had to cry. I understood that I had to keep my self-control; in recent days I had wasted too much spirit power.

I walked without haste across the long bridge, into the darkness of the valley. Then I thought that the guard could come after me, and I quickened my stride.

To the left, beyond the city limits, from a tall tower shone the lights of the crystal lamps that were lit on holidays, on visits to Jerusalem by kings and prefects from the province, and also to warn the people of the dawning of a new moon. I thought that at that time those lamps were not burning in honor of Passover, but as a sign of my defeat.

My hopes were pinned on my students. Of course they will come, I thought feverishly, and together we will not be lost. I wonder where Matthew is hanging out. For he has our money. To Matthew I doubted more than those too, are really loved he did in this world only from his knapsack of scrolls. A knapsack! I suddenly hated my own knapsack, which contained only some clothes and a few flat, unleavened loaves, left over from the evening meal. It suddenly occurred to me that there was no more bitter fate than to lug this paltry knapsack along, on its way to the unknown, a symbol of human vanity. And gritting my teeth, I hurled it from the bridge into the ravine.

'Disappear, Jerusalem! I invoked the voice of the East, the voice of the best, the voice of the four winds,' I whispered the bus roads, furious with myself and with the whole city, and this wrath brightened my consciousness. 'My voice against Jerusalem! My voice against the grooms and brides, my voice against the whole people! Jerusalem be cursed! The people are cursed!'

The bed lay, but with something of hesitation, as if a human being was coming back to his senses after a serious illness. I took the road to Jericho, lying there along a few stadia off, for on the other side of the valley left a barely discernible path, and climbed up through the thorny scrub against the steep rocky slope to the Olive Garden, just at the very back of the old, half-collapsed house. I stepped inside, walked to a corner, lowered myself against the wall and dozed off.

I awoke just as the sun was now shining through the hole in the roof, and I understood that my disciples had abandoned me. They had become afraid, had lost faith in their teacher, had not had the strength to love the simple man in him who did believe in him, and sometimes was that not enough? Then an elevator went up to me: perhaps one of my students had been arrested and had betrayed my whereabouts? A moment later I heard footsteps beyond the hole of the door and Bert was so frightened that I did not even find the strength to come to the government.

It was Judas! He was the only one who, where I had been abandoned by all the other disciples (not to mention the women, who flew in all directions at the slightest breath of wind, like nut shells), had come to me. At a time when I had lost hope of seeing any of my loved ones. Where was Simon? Where were the others? Probably everyone had fled town, blindly. Stupid Matthew had taken his writing to safety... At that moment I wished that soldiers had captured him, and taken away his book scrolls and destroyed them, that they had given him a bit of a beating themselves, that was the only way to sober him up. What was to become of him, if everyone had managed to evade arrest? I thought. Philippus did find a youth and with him perhaps his fortune, Simon shall go into the service of a more successful Messiah or join the suit of thieves. Only after the future fate of Andrew remains guesswork, he was always so unpredictable.

'Jesus, I managed to get here as if by a miracle, there are patrols and spies everywhere, the whole city is talking about you...' the Judas hastily explained. 'Caiaphas demands of his soldiers that they get you at all costs. They have turned all of Jerusalem over, and now they are coming out of the area. You can no longer leave the Garden unseen ... A little more and they will be here ... I love you, you must get yourself to safety, Master. I have obtained women's clothes for you, charcoal Roger, a mirror and a bright headscarf, you dress up and measure that you get as far away from the city as possible. In the meantime, I fool them, distract them. We look alike, and the soldiers don't know you by face... I'll also make sure they beat me up on the way, I'll insult their head man, play him, it couldn't be better, all beat up faces look alike...'

I understood what he wanted. I hugged Judas, unless his head was on my chest, and told him that if the authorities had figured everything out and let him go, he would be able to find me in Damascus, which everyone there knew.

We were hiding like mice, in that long-abandoned house with the earth floor, littered with dirt. It had not been lived in by anyone in ages, not in 100 years had anyone feral or maintained it, no one had reaped the benefits. Those were my days in Paris, where I could wait for death. I had not a penny left of the ephemeral riches of the prophet, I was haunted, on my arms were the old and new scars of numerous veins, and most of all I wanted to smoke kif, to find peace in my soul. The only valuable thing I had left was the amber pipe I had received from the old scribe Shammai.

My stepfather's gray beard had long been mutilated with the earth, while my mother had lost all of her mind. God was playing with me and already pushing me through to the abyss, and if the poor Judas really hadn't been, it would have ended. What happened the moment everything ended? Probably then came the oblivion that resembled the warm, velvety soft mouth of a woman swaddling you, by now stripped of all sins.

Above Damascus it was now night. Running out of oil in the lamp, I got up, filled the lamp and put my mouth to good use, to write off these last lines. Looking out through the narrow window from the room where I was sitting, the city belched out one giant stone. Here and there a light burns. The moon is waning.

When people tell us about the life of an idol, it is always simple and purposeful, like a pole, but when I look at my own life, I shudder at its indeterminacy. Yes, the times of the prophets are over.

Probably they will keep the memory of me for a while (and yes, two yes, as long as the emperor does not make any new ergenisweak reforms). Allegedly, to get bread and wine, my disciples implore the gullible necks that they have remained faithful to me to the end. They just do. Standing under a tree looking at a star, it is as if it were among the branches' hands, so too was I only seemingly present among those whom I healed and taught, for after all, my spirit was somewhere far away. But surely there will be someone to find out everything that happened to me? After all, even the path of a star can be calculated, using ephemerides, Mathematica and Arabic instruments, and the unknown opens up on the basis of the known. Incidentally, man differs from a star in that his path cannot be strictly calculated. With what means did you have to equip yourself if you wanted to know the truth? Yes, at forms also only a weak reflection of reality, and now I am putting an end to these notes, and with them to my old life that had made me a prophet, even though I must confess that I was not worthy of it. I will not stay long in Damascus. I want one loving wife whom I love, not hundreds of fierce ecstatic women as before, I want to settle in a cedar forest, in a house by a stream, I want to build a small garden on a sunny terrace, with medicinal plants, let the Kingdom of Heaven take care of itself, because it is (what a time it took to find that out!) Not God's child bidding for salvation, but a Chimera pursuing its own inhuman goals.

I watched carefully as Judas walked up to the soldiers. The Centurion asked him his name. 'I am Jesus,' Judas said, and his hands were tied behind his back. He was calm and smiling. It was my recollection that the legionnaires did not take a look at the old house. Soon the footsteps were hushed, I hurriedly got up to put on the women's clothes. Judas had done this for me, and it had been his will. Will I be able to live on? Yes. You have to keep your mind clear and live, because you won't get a second chance.

The month of Elul...

The year 3793 since the creation of the world.