Nikos Kazantzakis - The Last Temptation of Christ

His pale, embittered face suddenly gleamed. Perhaps God’s claws had clutched him all those years precisely in order to bring him where he was now going of his own volition, free of the claws. Did this mean that his desires were beginning to join with those of God? Wasn’t this the greatest and most difficult of man’s duties? Wasn’t this the meaning of happiness?

His heart felt relieved. No more claws, no more wrestling and screaming. This morning at daybreak God had come filled with compassion, had come like a cool, gentle breeze and said to him, “Let us go!” He had opened the door; and now-what a delicious feeling of reconciliation, what happiness! “It is too much for me,” he murmured. “I shall lift high my head and sing the psalm of salvation: ‘You are my shelter and my refuge, Lord…’ ” His joy could not be contained in his heart; it overflowed. He proceeded in the sweet light of the dawn, surrounded by God’s great wealth-olive trees, vineyards, wheatfields; and the psalm of joy bounded out of his loins, trying to reach the sky. He lifted high his head and opened his mouth, but suddenly his heart skipped a beat: he had just clearly heard two bare feet running behind him. He shortened his stride and listened carefully. The two feet checked their pace. His knees gave way and he stopped. The two feet stopped also.

“I know who it is,” he whispered, trembling. “I know…”

But he emboldened his heart and whirled abruptly in order to catch sight of her before she vanished… No one!

The eastern sky had turned dark cherry. The ears of grain were fully ripe; the stalks inclined their heads in the windless air and awaited the sickle. Not a single object was on the plain-not a beast, not a man. Only in Nazareth, behind him, was there any sign of life. Smoke had already begun to rise from one or two houses. The women were awakening.

He felt somewhat reassured. Better not lose time, he reflected. Let’s run for all I’m worth and get around to the other side of that hill, to lose her. He started to run.

On the other side of him the wheat towered to the height of a man. It was here in this plain of Galilee that wheat had originated, as had the vine, and wild vines still crept up the mountainsides. An ox cart creaked in the distance. Donkeys shook themselves up off the ground, sniffed the air, lifted their tails and braved. He heard laughter and chattering. Honed sickles flashed; the first mowers appeared. The sun saw them and fell on their lovely arms, necks and shins.

When they glimpsed the son of Mary running in the distance they burst out laughing.

“Hey there, who are you chasing,” they called to him, “or who’s chasing you?”

But when he came closer and they were able to get a better view of him, they knew who he was. They all stopped their chatter and huddled one next to the other.

“The cross-maker!” they murmured. “A curse on him! Yesterday I saw him crucify…”

“Look at the gory kerchief he’s wearing!”

“It was his share of the clothes of the Crucified. May the blood of the innocent fall upon his head!”

They continued hurriedly on their way, but now the laughter stuck in their throats and they were silent.

The son of Mary went past them, left them behind him, crossed the wheatfields and reached the vineyards which covered the gentle slopes of the mountain. Seeing a fig tree, he started to slow down in order to pick a leaf and smell it. He liked the smell of fig leaves very much: they reminded him of human armpits. When he was little he used to close his eyes and smell the leaves, and he imagined he was snuggled again at his mother’s breast, sucking… But the moment he stopped and put out his hand to pick the leaf, cold sweat poured over his body. The two feet-which had been running behind him-suddenly stopped too. His hair stood on end. His arm still in the air, he looked all around him. Solitude. No one but God. The soil was wet, the leaves dripping; in the hollow of a tree a butterfly struggled to open its dewy wings and fly.

I’ll scream, he decided. I’ll scream to find relief.

Whenever he remained alone on the mountain or on the deserted plain at the hour of noon, what was it that he felt so abundantly-joy? bitterness? or was it, above everything else, fear? He always sensed God girding him about on all sides, and he would utter a wild cry, as though he wanted to make a desperate attempt to escape. Sometimes he crowed like a cock, sometimes he howled like a hungry jackal, sometimes like a dog being whipped. But as he opened his mouth now to cry out, his eye caught sight of the butterfly that was struggling to unfold its wings. He bent over, lifted it up gently and placed it high above the ground on a leaf of the fig tree, where the sun began to beat down upon it.

“My sister, my sister,” he murmured, and he looked at it with compassion.

Leaving the butterfly behind him to become warm, he set out once more and immediately heard the muffled tread of the two bare feet over the moist soil, a few paces in back of him. In the beginning, when he first left Nazareth, her sound was very faint: it seemed to come from far away. Little by little the feet had gained courage and drawn closer. Soon, the son of Mary thought with a shudder, they would catch him up. “Lord, O Lord,” he murmured, “grant that I may reach the monastery quickly, before she pounces on me.”

The sun now invaded the plain, beating down upon birds, beasts and men. A heterogeneous rumble mounted from the soil; on the mountainsides goats and sheep began to stir and shepherds to sound their pipes: the world grew tame and civilized. In a few moments, as soon as he reached that tall poplar ahead of him on his left, he would see Cana, the merry village he loved so much. While he was still a beardless stripling-before God dug his claws into him-how many times he and his mother had come here to the boisterous festivals! How many times he had joined the others in admiring the girls from all the surrounding villages as they danced beneath this tall, thickly foliaged poplar and the happy earth trembled under their stamping feet. But once, when he was twenty years old and stood gasping for breath under this poplar, holding a rose in his hand…

He shuddered. Suddenly he saw her of the thousand secret kisses standing once more before him. Hidden in her bosom were the sun and the moon, one to the right, the other to the left; and day and night rose and fell behind the transparent bodice of her dress.

“Leave me alone, leave me alone!” he cried. “I’ve been dedicated to God; I’m on my way to meet him in the desert!” Hurrying along, he passed the poplar. Suddenly Cana unfolded before him: the squat houses all anointed with whitewash, the square drying platforms, brilliantly gilded with the maize and huge gourds which had been spread out under the sun. The young girls, their bare feet dangling over the edges, were stringing red peppers along cotton thread, to decorate their homes.

Lowering his eyes, he rushed by this trap of Satan’s as fast as he could. He did not want to see anyone or to be seen by anyone. Behind him the two bare feet now stamped loudly over the cobbles: they were rushing too.

The sun had mounted; it now covered the earth. Singing merrily, the reapers swung their sickles and mowed. The handfuls quickly became armfuls, bundles, then stacks which towered above the threshing floors. As he proceeded, the son of Mary hastily wished the landowners a good harvest: “Each ear big enough to fill a sack!”

Cana had vanished behind the olive groves. The shadows snuggled close to the roots of the trees; it was almost noon. And as the son of Mary rejoiced in everything around him, keeping his mind fixed on God, the sweet smell of newly baked bread suddenly hit his nostrils. All at once he felt hungry, and the moment he did so, his entire body jumped for joy. How many years he had felt hunger and yet never experienced this holy yearning for bread! But now…