José Saramago: The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

Thin and smooth haired, the second man bows to the earth that will devour him, this pathetic creature condemned to both death and hell must be the Bad Thief, an honest man when all is said and done, who, free of divine and human laws, did not pretend to believe that sudden repentance suffices to redeem a whole life of evil. Above him, also weeping and wailing like the sun in front, the moon can be seen in the guise of a woman with the most incongruous ring in one ear, an unprecedented liberty no artist or poet is likely to repeat. Both sun and moon illuminate the earth in equal measure, but the ambience of light is circular and shadowless, causing everything on the distant horizon to stand out clearly, turrets and walls, a drawbridge across a moat whose water glistens, Gothic arches, and, on the crest of the farthest hill, the motionless sails of a windmill. Somewhat closer, in this deceptive perspective, four horsemen in armor and helmets, bearing lances, proudly parade their horses with admirable dexterity, but they appear to have come to the end of their display and are making farewell gestures to an invisible audience. The same impression of closing festivities is given by that foot soldier who is on the point of going off, carrying something in his right hand that could be a cloth, perhaps even a mantle or tunic, while two more soldiers look annoyed, frustrated, as if they had lost at gambling, although from afar it is difficult to tell what is in their minute faces. Hovering over these common soldiers and the walled city are four angels, two of them portrayed full length. They weep and mourn, with the exception of the angel who solemnly holds a goblet to the crucified man's right side in order to collect the last drop of blood from a lance wound. In this place known as Golgotha, many have met the same cruel fate and many others will follow them, but this naked man, nailed by hands and feet to a cross, the son of Joseph and Mary, named Jesus, is the only one whom posterity will remember and honor by inscribing his initials in capitals. So this is he whom Joseph of Arimathaea and Mary Magdalene are gazing upon, this is he who causes the sun and moon to weep and who only a moment ago praised the Good Thief and despised the Bad Thief, failing to understand that there is no difference between them, or, if there is a difference, it lies in something else, for good and evil do not exist in themselves, each being merely the absence of the other. Shining above his head with a thousand rays brighter than those of the sun and moon put together is a placard in Roman letters proclaiming him king of the Jews, surrounded by a wounding crown of thorns like that worn, without their even knowing and with no visible sign of blood, by all who are not allowed to be sovereigns of their own bodies. Jesus, unlike the two thieves, has nowhere to rest his feet, the entire weight of his body would be supported by his hands nailed to the wood had he not life enough left in him to hold himself erect over his bent legs, but that life is nearing its end as the blood continues to flow from the abovementioned wound. Between the two wedges that keep the cross upright and that have also been driven into the dark ground, making a gaping wound there as irremediable as any human grave, we see a skull, also a shinbone and a shoulder blade, but what concerns us is the skull, for this is what Golgotha means, skull. No one knows who put these human remains here or for what purpose, perhaps it was simply a sly reminder to these poor wretches about what awaits them before they turn at last to earth, dust, and nothingness. But there are some who claim that this is Adam's skull, risen from the deep murk of ancient geological strata and, because it can not now return there, eternally condemned to behold its only possible paradise which is forever lost. Farther back, in the same field where the horsemen execute one last maneuver, a man is walking away but looking back in this direction. In his left hand he carries a bucket, and in his right a staff. At the tip of the staff there ought to be a sponge, not easy to see from here, and the bucket, one can safely bet, contains water with vinegar. One day, and forever after, this man will be much maligned, accused of having given Jesus vinegar out of spite and contempt when he asked for water, but the truth is that he offered him vinegar and water because at that time it was one of the best ways of quenching thirst. The man walks away, does not wait for the end, he did all he could to relieve the mortal thirst of the three condemned men, making no distinction between Jesus and the thieves, because these are things of this earth, which will persist on this earth, and from them will be written the only possible history.

NIGHT IS FAR FROM OVER. HANGING FROM A NAIL NEAR THE door, an oil lamp is burning, but its flickering flame, like a small, luminous almond, barely impinges on the darkness, which fills the house from top to bottom and penetrates the farthest corners, where the shadows are so dense that they appear to form a solid mass. Joseph awoke with a fright, as if someone had roughly shaken him by the shoulder, but he must have been dreaming, because he lives alone in this house with his wife, who has not so much as stirred and is fast asleep. Not only is it unusual for him to wake in the middle of the night, but he rarely opens his eyes before daybreak, when the gray, cold morning light begins to filter through the chink in the door. How often he has thought of repairing the door, what could be easier for a carpenter than to cover the chink with a piece of wood left over from some job, but he is now so accustomed to seeing that vertical strip of light when he opens his eyes in the morning that he has reached the absurd conclusion that without it he would be trapped forever in the shadows of sleep, in the darkness of his own body and the darkness of the world. The chink in the door is as much a part of the house as the walls and ceiling, as the oven and earthen floor. In a whisper, to avoid disturbing his wife, who was still asleep, he recited words of thanksgiving, words he said each morning upon returning from the mysterious land of dreams, Thanks be to You, Almighty God, King of the Universe, who has mercifully restored my soul to life. Perhaps because he had not fully regained the power of all five senses, five unless at that time people were not yet aware there were five or, conversely, had more and were about to lose those that would serve little purpose nowadays, Joseph watched his body from a distance while it slowly was occupied by a soul making its gradual return, like trickling waters as they wend their way in rivulets and streams before penetrating the earth to feed sap into stems and leaves. Looking at Mary as she lay beside him, Joseph began to realize just how laborious this return to wakefulness could be, and a disturbing thought came to him, that this wife of his, fast asleep, was really a body without a soul, for no soul is present in a body while it sleeps, otherwise there would be no sense in our thanking God each morning for having restored our souls as we awaken. Then a voice within him asked, What thing or person inside us dreams what we dream, and then he wondered, Are dreams perhaps the soul's memories of the body, and this seemed a reasonable explanation. Mary stirred, could her soul have been near at hand, already here in the house, but she did not awaken, no doubt in the midst of some troubled dream, and after heaving a deep sigh like a broken sob she drew closer to her husband, with a sensuousness she would never have dared indulge while awake. Joseph pulled the thick, rough blanket over his shoulders and snuggled up close to Mary. He could feel her warmth, perfumed like a linen chest filled with dried herbs, gradually penetrate the fibers of his tunic and merge with the heat of his own body. Then slowly he closed his eyes, stopped thinking, and, oblivious to his soul, sank back into a deep sleep.

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