José Saramago - The Collected Novels of José Saramago

From a discreet distance Roman soldiers kept a lookout, ready to intervene in the event of disorderly behavior among those mourning and tending to the bodies. But these people showed no sign of making trouble, they were doing nothing but praying as they went from body to body, and this took more than two hours. Rending their garments, they recited the prayer for the dead over each corpse, relatives on the left, others on the right, their voices breaking the evening silence as they chanted, Lord, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You should visit him, man is but a puff of wind, his days pass like a shadow, he lives and fails to see death and saves his soul by escaping to the tomb, man born of woman is given little time and much disquiet, he blossoms like a flower and like a flower perishes, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You should visit him. And yet, after acknowledging man’s utter insignificance in the eyes of God, in tones so deep that they seemed to come from within rather than from the voices themselves, the chorus soared in exaltation to proclaim before Almighty God our unsuspected worth, Do not forget, O Lord, that You made man a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and honor. When the mourners reached Joseph, whom they did not know and who was the last of the forty, they passed on quickly, but the carpenter had taken with him to the other world everything he needed. Their haste was justified, because the law does not allow the crucified to remain unburied until the following day, and the sun was already going down. Jesus, given his youth, did not have to rend his garments, he was exempt from this ceremony of mourning, but his strong, clear voice could be heard above all the others when he intoned, Blessed be the Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who created you with justice, kept you alive with justice, nourished you with justice, who with justice allowed you to know this world, and with justice will resurrect you, blessed be the Lord, who resurrects the dead. Stretched out on the ground, Joseph, if he can still feel the pain of the nails, may perhaps also hear these words, and he must know what part God’s justice played in his life, now that he can no longer expect anything more from either the one or the other. The mourners, finished praying, now had to bury their dead, but there were so many dead, and with night fast approaching it was impossible to find a fitting place for all of them, that is to say a real tomb covered with a stone, and as for wrapping the bodies in mortuary cloth or even a simple shroud, there was no hope of that. So they decided to dig a long trench to hold them, which was not the first time nor would it be the last that men were buried where they lay. Jesus too was given a spade, and he set about digging vigorously beside the grown-ups. Destiny in its wisdom decreed that Joseph be buried in a grave dug by his own son, thus fulfilling the prophecy, The son of man will bury man, while he himself remains unburied. However enigmatic these words seem at first, they merely state the obvious, for the last man, by virtue of being last, will have no one to bury him. But this will not be true of the boy who has just buried his father, the world will not end with him, and we shall be here for thousands and thousands of years in a constant succession of births and deaths, and if man has always been the implacable foe and executioner of man, all the more reason for him to go on being the gravedigger of man.

The sun has now disappeared behind the mountain. Enormous dark clouds over the valley of Jordan move slowly westward, as if pulled by this fading light that tinges their upper edges crimson. It has suddenly become cooler, and rain seems likely tonight although unusual for this time of the year. The soldiers have withdrawn, taking advantage of the waning light to return to their encampment some distance away, where their comrades-in-arms have probably arrived after carrying out a similar search in Nazareth. This is how a modern war should be fought, with the utmost coordination, not in the haphazard fashion of Judas the Galilean’s rebel force, and the outcome is there for all to see, thirty-nine of his men crucified, the fortieth an innocent man who came with the best of intentions and met a miserable death. The people of Sepphoris will look among the ruins of their burnt-out city for somewhere to spend the night, and at daybreak each family will salvage what possessions they can from their former homes, then go off to make a new life for themselves elsewhere, because not only has Sepphoris been razed to the ground but Rome will make sure the city is not rebuilt for some time. Mary and Jesus are two shadows in the midst of a dark forest consisting of nothing but trunks. The mother draws her son to her bosom, two frightened souls searching as one for courage, and the dead beneath the ground, it seems, wish to detain the living. Jesus suggested to his mother, Let’s spend the night in the city, but Mary told him, We cannot, your brothers and sisters are all alone and they must be famished. They could scarcely see where they were treading. After much stumbling, they finally reached the road, which in the dark stretched out like a parched riverbed. No sooner did they leave Sepphoris than it started raining, heavy drops to begin with, making a gentle sound as they hit the thick dust on the ground. The rain became more insistent, oppressive, the dust soon turned to mud, and Mary and her son had to remove their sandals to avoid losing them. They walk in silence, the mother covering her son’s head with her mantle, they have nothing to say to each other, perhaps they are even thinking vaguely that Joseph is not dead after all, that when they get home, they will find him tending to the children as best he can, and he will ask his wife, What on earth possessed you to go out without asking my permission, but the tears have welled up again in Mary’s eyes, not only because of her grief but also because of this infinite weariness, this continuous, persistent rain, the grim darkness, all much too sad and black for any hope that Joseph is still alive.

One day someone will tell the widow about the miracle witnessed at the gates of Sepphoris, when the tree trunks used to crucify the prisoners took root again and sprouted new leaves, and miracle is the right word, first because the Romans were in the habit of taking the crosses with them when they left, and secondly because trunks that have been chopped top and bottom have no sap left or shoots capable of transforming a thick, bloodstained post into a living tree. The credulous attributed this wonder to the blood of the martyrs, the skeptics said it was the rain, but no one had ever heard of blood or rain reviving trees once they were made into crosses and abandoned on a mountain slope or the plain of a desert. That it had been willed by God was something no one dared suggest, not only because His will, whatever that may be, is inscrutable, but also because no one could think of any good reason why the crucified of Sepphoris should be the beneficiaries of this peculiar manifestation of divine grace, which was really more in keeping with the style of pagan gods. These trees here will survive a long time, and the day will come when this episode will be forgotten, and since mankind seeks an explanation for everything, whether it be true or false, tales and legends will be invented, containing facts to begin with, then moving gradually away from the facts, until they become pure fantasy. Then eventually the trees will die of old age or be cut down to make way for a road, a school, a house, a shopping center, or a military base, the excavators will unearth the skeletons buried for two thousand years, and the anthropologists will appear on the scene, and an expert in anatomy will examine the remains and announce to a shocked world that there is conclusive evidence that men were crucified in those days with their legs bent at the knee. And people will be unable to refute these scientific findings though they find them aesthetically deplorable.