Nikos Kazantzakis - The Last Temptation of Christ

The son of Mary was hungry and thirsty. For a split second he envied those laborers who finished their day’s work, returned dead tired and famished to their hovels, and saw from afar the lighted fire, the smoke rising and their wives preparing the dinner.

He suddenly felt more completely alone than even the foxes and owls, for they at least had a nest or lair and warm, beloved creatures awaiting them. He had no one, not even his mother. He squatted at the foot of the cedar and huddled up into a ball. He was shivering.

“Lord,” he murmured, “I thank you for everything; for the loneliness, the hunger, the cold. I lack nothing.”

As he said this, however, he seemed to sense the injustice which was being done him. He swept his eyes around him like a trapped beast, and his temples drummed with anger and fear. Getting up onto his knees, he riveted his eyes upon the dark path. The naked feet could still be heard. They were dislodging the stones and mounting. They reached the summit finally and then, involuntarily-he himself was startled to hear his own voice-the son of Mary cried out: “Come closer, my lady. Do not hide. It’s night now; no one sees you. Reveal yourself!”

He held his breath and waited.

Not a soul replied. Nothing but the eternal sounds of the night rising sweetly, peacefully, into the air: crickets and grasshoppers, goatsuckers sighing; and far in the distance, dogs that discovered in the darkness things invisible to men, and barked… He stretched his head forward. He was positive that someone stood under the cedar, directly before him.

“My lady… my lady,” he whispered now in a hushed, beseeching tone, trying to entice the invisible. He waited. He had stopped shivering. Sweat poured from his armpits and brow.

He stared, listening intently. At one moment he imagined he heard the laugh again, coming softly out of the darkness, at another that he saw the air whirl, congeal and become a body which was no sooner formed than unformed and lost.

Melting away with the effort, the son of Mary fought to tether the dark air. He did not cry out now, did not beseech; he simply knelt with outstretched head under the cedar and waited, melting away…

The rocks bruised his knees. He changed his position, leaning against the trunk of the cedar and closing his eyes. And then, without losing his tranquility or uttering a cry, he saw her-inside his eyes. But she had not come in the way he expected. He expected to see his bereaved mother with both her hands on his head, calling down her curse upon him. But now what was this! Trembling, he gradually opened his eyes. Flashing before him was the savage body of a woman covered head to foot with interlocking scales of thick bronze armor. But the head was not a human head; it was an eagle’s, with yellow eyes and a crooked beak which grasped a mouthful of flesh. She looked tranquilly, mercilessly, at the son of Mary.

“You did not come as I expected you,” he murmured. “You are not the Mother… Have pity and speak to me. Who are you?” He asked, waited, asked again. Nothing. Nothing but the yellow glitter of the round eyes in the darkness.

But suddenly the son of Mary understood.

“The Curse!” he cried, and he fell face downward onto the ground.

THE HEAVENS SPARKLED above him, while below, the earth wounded him with its stones and thorns. He had stretched out his arms; he struggled convulsively and moaned as though the whole earth was a cross on which he was being crucified.

The darkness passed over him with its large and small attendants-the stars and the birds of the night. On every side the dogs, submissive to man, barked on the thrashing floors and guarded the wealth of their masters. It was cold; Jesus shivered. Sleep overcame him for a moment and led him on an airy promenade to warm, faraway lands but straightway threw him back down again to earth, onto the stones.

Toward midnight he heard merry hells passing at the foot of the hill and, behind the bells, the melancholy song of a camel driver. There was the sound of conversation, someone sighed, the clear fresh voice of a woman spouted nut of the night, but the road quickly grew silent once more… Mounted on a golden-saddled camel, her face grooved from weeping, the make-up on her cheeks turned to mud, Magdalene was passing by-in the middle of the night. Wealthy merchants from the four corners of the earth had arrived. Finding her neither at the well nor in her house, they chose the camel with the richest, the most golden harness, and sent their driver to bring her to them posthaste. Their route had been extremely long and dangerous, but they kept constantly in mind a body they would find at Magdala, and this gave them strength. They had not found it, however, so they dispatched the driver and lined up in Magdalene’s yard, where they now sat with closed eyes, waiting.

Little by little the bells in the night grew dimmer, sweeter. They now seemed to the son of Mary like tender laughter, like purring jets of water which gushed into a deep orchard and called him caressingly by name; and in this way, gently, following the seductive ring of the camel’s bells, he slid back again into sleep.

He had a dream. The world seemed to be a green meadow, all in bloom, and God an olive-skinned shepherd boy with two twisted horns, newly grown and still tender, who sat next to a cistern of water and played his pipe. Never in his life had the son of Mary heard such a sweet, bewitching sound. While God the shepherd boy played on, the soil, fistful by fistful, quivered and stirred, grew spherical, came to life, and graceful deer with wreathlike antlers suddenly filled the meadow. God leaned over and looked at the water: the cistern filled with fish; he lifted his eyes to the trees: their leaves changed color, became twittering birds. He had gathered momentum; the piper’s music grew furious, and two insects as large as men emerged from the ground and at once began to embrace on the springtime grass. They rolled from one end of the meadow to the other, coupled, separated, coupled again, laughed indecently, scoffed at the shepherd boy, and hissed. The boy lowered his pipe and regarded the audacious and obscene pair. Suddenly his patience gave out. With one blow he crushed his pipe under his heel, and all at once deer, birds, trees, water and the glued man-woman vanished.

The son of Mary uttered a cry and awoke, but not before his eye was caught, just at the moment of awakening, by the pasted bodies of a man and a woman hurling down into the dark trapdoor of his bowels. Terrified, he jumped to his feet.

“So, such is the mud within me, such the filth!”

He unbelted the nail-studded leather strap, trampled the clothes he was wearing underfoot and, without speaking, began pitilessly to scourge his thighs, back and face. The blood spurted out and splashed him. He felt it and was relieved.

Dawn… The stars grew dim; the frosty wind pricked his bones. The cedar above him filled with wings and song. He turned around. The air was empty; in the light of the day the bronze eagle-headed Curse had become invisible again.

I must go away, must escape, he thought, must not set foot in Magdala-curse the place! I won’t stop till I reach the desert and bury myself in the monastery. There I shall kill the flesh and turn it into spirit.

He placed his palm on the ancient trunk of the cypress and stroked it. He felt the tree’s soul rise from the roots and branch out to the highest, tenderest twig.

“Farewell, my sister,” he murmured. “Last night under your shelter I brought shame upon myself. Forgive me.

He spoke and then, exhausted and with dismal forebodings, started down the hill.

He reached the main road. The plain was awakening; the first rays of the sun fell and filled the loaded threshing floors. with gold. “I must not go through Magdala,” he murmured again. “I’m afraid.” He stopped to decide which way to turn in order to reach the lake. He took the first narrow road he found on his right. He knew that Magdala sat to the left, the lake to the right, and he proceeded with confidence.