Nikos Kazantzakis - The Last Temptation of Christ

His nostrils sniffed the air. Following the aroma, he strode across a ditch, climbed a fence, entered a vineyard and discovered a squat but beneath a hollow olive tree. Smoke ascended, untwisting as it passed the thatched roof. An old lady was bent over, wrestling with a small brick oven which stood in the hut’s entranceway. She was quick-moving, had a nose like a skewer and eyes without eyelashes. At her side was a dog, black with yellow spots. He had placed his front paws on the oven and opened wide a deep, famished mouth filled with teeth. As soon as he heard footsteps in the vineyard he barked and charged the intruder. Surprised, the old woman turned. When she saw the youth her tiny eyes gleamed. Delighted to see a man enter her solitude, she stopped work, the wooden shovel in her hand.

“Welcome,” she said. “Hungry, Where have you come from, with God’s grace?”

“From Nazareth.”

“Hungry?” the old woman asked again, laughing. “Your nostrils are twitching like a greyhound’s.”

“Yes, I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

But the old lady was deaf and did not hear.

“What?” she said. “Speak louder.”

“I’m hungry. Forgive me.”

“Forgive you-why? Hunger isn’t anything to be ashamed of, my fine lad, nor is thirst, nor love. They’re all God’s-so come closer and don’t be ashamed.”

She laughed again, revealing her one precious tooth.

“Here you’ll find bread and water. Love-farther on, in Magdala.”

She grasped a loaf which she had placed with the others on the stone bench next to the oven. “Look, this is the loaf we reserve for passers-by each time we empty the oven. We call it the grasshopper’s bread. It’s not mine; it’s yours. Cut a slice and eat.”

The son of Mary felt calmed. He sat down on the root of the ancient olive tree and began to eat. How tasty this bread was, how refreshing the water, how sweet the two olives which the old lady gave him to accompany his bread. They had slender pits and were as fat and fleshy as apples! He chewed tranquilly and ate, feeling that his body and soul had joined and become one now, that they were receiving the bread, olives and water with one mouth, rejoicing, the both of them, and being nourished.

The old lady leaned against the oven and admired him.

“You certainly were hungry,” she said with a laugh. “Eat. You’re young, you’ve got a long road ahead of you still, and no end of troubles. Eat, make yourself strong so that you’ll be able to endure.”

She broke off the corner of another loaf and gave him two more olives. Her kerchief slipped from her head, revealing her balding scalp. She hastily tied it up again.

“Where are you headed, with the grace of God?” she asked.

“To the desert.”

“Where? Speak louder!”

“To the desert.”

The old woman contorted her toothless mouth; her eyes grew fierce. “To the monastery?” she screamed with unexpected anger. “Why? What business do you have there? Don’t you pity your youth?”

He did not speak. The old woman shook her bald head and hissed like a snake. “You want to find God, do you?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” said the youth, his voice extremely thin.

The old lady kicked the dog, which was tangled up in her reed-like legs, and approached the youth.

“Ooo, unlucky devil,” she shouted, “don’t you know that God is found not in monasteries but in the homes of men! Wherever you find husband and wife, that’s where you find God; wherever children and petty cares and cooking and arguments and reconciliations, that’s where God is too. Don’t listen to those eunuchs. Sour grapes! Sour grapes! The God I’m telling you about, the domestic one, not the monastic: that’s the true God. He’s the one you should adore. Leave the other to those lazy, sterile idiots in the desert!”

The more the old lady spoke the more inflamed she became. She talked and screeched, had her fling of revenge, grew calm.

“Excuse me, my brave lad,” she said, touching the young man’s shoulder, “but once I had a son, a fine one like yourself. He went out of his mind one morning, opened the door and left to go to the monastery in the desert, to the Healers-a plague on them and may they never heal anyone as long as they live! Well, I lost him and now I fill the oven and empty it-to feed whom? My children? My grandchildren? I’m a withered, fruitless tree.”

She stopped for a moment to wipe her eyes, then began again. “For years I lifted my hands to God. Why was I born?’ I shouted.,I had one son; why did you take him from me?’ I shouted and shouted, but who could expect him to hear! Only once did I see the heavens open. It was at midnight, on the top of the prophet Elijah’s mountain. I heard a thunderous voice: ‘Shout yourself hoarse, for all I care.’ Then the heavens closed again; and that was the last I ever called to God.”

The son of Mary got up. He held out his hand to say goodbye to the old woman, but she drew hers back. Once more she began to hiss like a snake. “So it’s the desert, is it! You too have an appetite for sand, eh? But where are your eyes, my fine lad? Don’t you see vineyards, the sun, women? Go on, I tell you, go to Magdala-that’s where you belong! Haven’t you ever read the Scriptures? God says, ‘I don’t want fasting and prayer, I want meat!’ In other words, he wants you to produce him children!”

“Farewell,” the young man said. “May God repay you for the bread you’ve fed me.”

“May God repay you too,” said the old lady, mollified; “may he repay you for the good you have done me. It’s been years since a man stopped at my broken-down hovel, and if anyone did pass by, he was always old…”

He strode back again through the vineyard, jumped over the fence and came out onto the main road.

“I can’t stand the sight of men,” he murmured. “I don’t want to see them; even the bread they give you is poison. Only one road leads to God: the one I chose today. It passes amidst men without touching them, and comes out in the desert. Oh, when will I arrive!”

His words had still not faded away when laughter broke out behind him. He turned, startled. A mouthless laugh convulsed the air, a hissing, rancorous, malevolent laugh.

“Adonai! Adonai!” was the shout which escaped his constricted larynx. His hair standing on end, he gazed at the guffawing air; then, in a raving frenzy, he started to run, and immediately heard the sound of the two bare feet which were running behind him.

“No matter where they are, they will catch me soon; no matter where they are, they will catch me soon,” he murmured, and ran.

The women were still mowing. The men carried the bundles to the threshing floors; others, farther on, had started to winnow. A warm breeze caught the chaff and sprinkled the earth with golden powder, leaving the heavy grain to pile up on the threshing floor. Passers-by took a fistful of wheat, kissed it and wished the landowners a similar harvest the following year.

Sitting between two hills in the distance, imposing, newly built, full of statues, theaters and painted women, was Tiberias, the idolatress. The sight of it filled the son of Mary with fright. Once, when he was still a child, he had come here with his uncle the rabbi, who had been called to rid a well-born Roman lady of her devils. It was obviously the devil of the bath which had mounted her, for she used to go out into the streets stark naked and waylay the passers-by. The rabbi and his nephew entered her palace at a time when the noble lady was again governed by her demon. She was running toward the street door, the slaves hot in her pursuit. The rabbi put out his staff and stopped her, but the moment she saw the boy, she pounced on him. The son of Mary screamed and fainted; and ever since then, whenever he recalled this shameless place, he trembled.