JESUS OF NAZARETH.

ACT I.

PROLOGUE.

SCENE I. THE DESERT.

The desert near Jordan. A grotto.

The crowd arrives in groups, men, women, children. Among them, Andrew, Simon, Eleazer, Jonathan, disciples of John.

JONATHAN: They are coming in greater numbers every day.

ELEAZER: They are coming from everywhere. From Moab, from Ephron and even Idumea. And Jerusalem isn't slow to send its children.

JONATHAN: They couldn't come with greater difficulty. Isn't it strange, this fascination with the desert and with the voice which shouts in the desert?

SIMON: Tell me, Jonathan, are there rich men and savants among them?

JONATHAN: See, Simon.

ANDREW: The ones over there are Jews. They are priests and doctors, Pharisees and Sadducees, that Jerusalem is sending to question John. Yesterday, others came. Ah, Simon, new disciple, dear Brother, if you heard the Master call them "Race of Vipers" and "White Sepulchres"! Mantles of hypocrisy.

A MAN: The seer will speak today, Lord?

ANDREW: He will speak if G.o.d commands him to speak.

MAN: I have my wife and my son and we made a long journey to hear him and be baptised.

ANDREW: From where are you coming, brother?

MAN: From Nazareth, in Galilee.

ANDREW: Barzilai!

MAN: That's my name! You know me?

ANDREW: And you don't recognize, Andrew, son of Jonas, the fisherman of Capernaeum? And my brother, Simon?

BARZILAI: I recognize you now. And you are coming like us?

ANDREW: We are disciples of the seer. And we baptise like him and by his order.

And he directs us to consecrate our lives to repentance because the Messiah is approaching.

BARZILAI: The Messiah is coming!

A MAN: The Messiah is coming?

ANDREW: So says the seer!

THE CROWD: The Messiah! He says the Messiah is going to come. He says the Messiah is going to come. The Son of David! The King who must not die! He is coming. The one who will save us. The exterminator of the Romans. The Day of Israel! Messiah! Messiah!

BARZILAI: Jesus Barjoseph! The seer is announcing the Messiah is come. Be happy, man! Do you know the sons of Jonas, Simon and Andrew?

JESUS: I know them.

BARZILAI: You will be able to announce the good news, carpenter, to Mary, your mother, and to the brave Joseph who is the best Israelite that I know. Are you coming to get yourself baptised, too?

JESUS: I came for that.

BARZILAI: That's very fine, young man. Tell me, for indeed you please me a bit.

Aren't you yet thinking of marrying a brave woman? I a.s.sure you, cousin, that I have not had to repent of being married. Imbecile that I am! Where's my head?

Excuse me! I was forgetting that Mary made you a Nazarene! I had lost sight of you for a while. I hadn't taken note of your hair! That good Mary. At least you are not going to trouble her by becoming a disciple of the seer. You owe her a little, cousin!

JESUS: I was hers for thirty years.

BARZILAI: Thirty years! You are already thirty years old. How time pa.s.ses. It reminds me again (they pa.s.s on) THE CROWD: Messiah! Messiah! He's come. The Saviour of Israel.

SIMON: But this credulity you smile at contains in its power all the troubles.

It's the tree of revolt on which Rome's thunder will fall. Let's keep an eye on these agitators. How they dress, besides, like Tolmai, with wool, or like this one in camel skin. There are as many perils for Jerusalem in the revolt of a leather belt and an unwashed head of hair as in the furor of a self styled enthusiast for the crown and laurels.

THE CROWD: Jehovah! Jehovah! Be propitious to your people! You see our ills.

Make health rain! Baptism! Baptism! And let the Messiah rule! Son of David! We implore you! Praise to Jehovah! G.o.d of Israel, sole G.o.d! Before whom tremble the idols and the Dominations. Send your Christ, G.o.d of Abraham, our father, G.o.d of Jacob, G.o.d of David!

SIMON: Shut up, ignorants, wretches!! Don't you know that Elijah must succeed first, before the Messiah comes? And when he appears, the prophet vows you will hear his terrible voice before having seen his face. Silence! Pray, fast, be charitable if you want G.o.d to act. It's not to the desert that G.o.d speaks, and you know where his temple is. The desert makes you senseless. Go find reason again, if you ever had any, in Jerusalem, in the Synagogues. You have priests and doctors. We are there to instruct you, blind troupe. Fulfill the Law! And you will shine on the Day of G.o.d. Stupids, why do you come to dispute with the jackals their dwelling place? What is it that attracts you from the depths of your small towns, with women and children? What will of the wisp? A man who howls like a wild beast? A madman who eats locusts? Or the hope of a little water on the head or an immersion in the Jordan? But you have rivers everywhere and all purifications; the misfortune of the weather and the heat of the Sun and the wrath of Jehovah come where there is an abundance of lunatics, and legions of possessed! Go away! When Elijah comes we will inform you. We will give you a meeting at the Temple on the day we enthrone the Messiah over all Israel.

JOHN: (appearing in the doorway of the grotto) Well then, what have you come seeking here, Pharisee? In the desert of Jehovah? And if you scorn the eater of locusts, why are you coming to listen to him? Ah, you also felt the suffering, the burning air, the wind of wrath to come. You smell death even in your synagogues, and like a troupe of the blind you seek the company of those possessed by G.o.d; you seek health from lunatics, you wait for him to rea.s.sure you. Rabble! Hear what the lion of Israel says! "Your incense stinks to me. Your sacrifices and your prayers fall back on the soil like a ball thrown by the weak hand of a child! Tribe of Levi, I had inst.i.tuted you to be the shepherd of Israel! You have led it to bitter pastures where it only browses to its perdition. I no longer see in Israel anything but Sodom and Gomorrah and forests of idols." Enthrone the Christ! Receive the prophet! Ah! Ah! Ah! You have gold, incense, marble and harps, but your heart is named luxury, your spirit domination, your body sin. Live in sin, your hands smell of death and it's not on your gold incense burner and harps that Jehovah implants the throne of Christ. At the sight of the Messiah, your faces will become like ashes and all your science, doctor, will vanish, just as the green fire of fireflies will be extinguished in the living fire of the day of Truth. Your death is coming and the day of Gehenna, you bandaged mummy, so that you, too, beating your breast with your fist, and failing to look at your rotting soul, you will present yourself at the Jordan, baring your flesh, nourished on vice, the fruits of death and pride, bowing before the gestures of the Eater of Gra.s.shoppers or the most ignorant of his disciples. Be humble, Pharisees, doctors, priests and scientists, you pride of Satan. Return into yourselves and try not to die of terror! If you were to see as I see, you would think: Is this me? This vomit and this malady? Is this me, this worm shrivelled on the embers? And if you could see yourself with the eye of the Eternal, with that exacting, meticulous and pitiless eye that nothing obscures, the shadow of the most subtle and delicate cloud, O Pharisee, colossus of pride and self satisfaction, you would collapse, melt like a slug under a pinch of salt, like snow by a burning lens, you would bellow out a sob to move the bra.s.s of heaven. But you laugh, saying to yourself, "This man is demented from living amongst the sand and stones, he's taken on the nature of the hyena and vipers' venom has fanged him. He's no longer a man!" You brother, you hear me, I am your brother, miserable and filthy like you, but a miserable one who weeps and a filthy one who blushes. And as for me, Pharisees, and as for me, too, Sadducees, I came to the desert because my eye had ceased to please itself at what made yours delight, and my deafened ear, deafened by your canticles, no longer heard the interior murmur, the bitter psalm of repentance.

At that time I tore off the dress which hid my infirmity, the pride of life which blinded me, and all the sensuality of a happy animal. He judged me worthy, he, Jehovah, to hear his word and to understand naked, without the commentary of the Temple. And I am no more than a voice which cries, swelled by the Eternal Word of the Eternal! Prepare the way for him who is going to come and who will baptise, by fire and by spirit those that he finds purified; for him who will be, like you a son of man and of woman, but having abdicated the rags of vain glory and the turban of vanity through which you think to distinguish your humanity from the brute. He's coming, the new David, with neither turban, nor mitre, but with an unbearable star blazing in his face, the King, the Judge, before whom all impure flesh liquefies. The G.o.d man who knows neither tears, nor laughter. The Messiah of Israel, but who will destroy Israel if he doesn't find it perfect.

THE CROWD: Baptise us! Baptise us! I repent. I abjure my sin. Purify us.

Prophet, tell us what we must do!

(Enter a litter born by slaves and an escort of soldiers commanded by Kanthera.)

KANTHERA: Make way! Make way!

ELEAZER: The Herodias.

JONATHAN: The King.

THE CROWD: Baptism! Baptism!

NICODEMUS: He speaks like the prophets.

JOSEPH: My heart leapt to hear him. There's more truth in him than in us. He's got the people inspired.

NICODEMUS: It's not eloquence, it's more than that.

JOSEPH: Nicodemus, he's the word of life and the breath of G.o.d.

KANTHERA: Make way for the Queen!

A MAN: Down with the Herodians!

CROWD: Messiah! The Baptist!

HERODIAS: (appearing) Kanthera, what is it?

KANTHERA: Queen, it's a sort of hairy beast who is preaching and haranguing the people who hear him.

JOHN: Ah, Jezebel, you dare to approach the cave of the Lion! What are you coming here to do, prost.i.tute?

HERODIAS: It's John. I see him at last. Show yourself, Salome, we are going to hear pretty insults! Slaves, lower the litter! (Herodias and Salome get out of the litter) Salome, those there are not Romans.

SALOME: Who are they then?

HERODIAS: Jews; my people and yours!

SALOME: With what an eye this animal looks at us!

JOHN: Israel! Behold your Queen! Herodias! Such is the name of prost.i.tution seated on your litter. Herod Antipas, of the tribe of Edom, the grandson of the Temple sweep, Tetrarch of Galilee, by the grace and the might of Rome. Antipas, the adulterer called them, she and her daughter from Rome; he winked and she left the bed of Phillipus for the bed of the brother of Phillipus, and she brought her daughter that Rome had educated in luxury, and who knows how to dance in dives to amuse the man from Machaerus, starving for a new lechery.

Behold your masters, Israel! Adore them! And behold the Christ that you deserve, the new Ahab, and the new Jezebel. And here, all decked out, people and Pharisees, vice and pride and ignominy that you hide from all except G.o.d!

Israel, behold yourself revealed to yourself! Here you are unmasked. You think yourself beautiful, Herodias, and what you denominate your beauty is the only book you want and know how to read. But, because learned in this perishable science, painting your wrinkles, perfuming your skin to hide the beast and b.e.s.t.i.a.l odor, masking your a.r.s.e, adorning with diamonds your b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and carrying your head high with a golden smile, you have charmed Antipas, who you've dispossessed of his wits, turning him thus away from the Arab girl he married; and thus reigning over the human debris. You await from Rome the t.i.tle and the tiara of Queen. Do you think to stupefy a standing man the way you've enchanted a man in bed? The man of the desert laughs to see the s.l.u.t standing on her feet, whose natural posture he knows is to march on her hands and knees, closer to the ground, smelling the odor of mud. And Jehovah who created you for what mysterious and terrible ends, O dancing girl, perfumed corpse, man trap, and tomb of his strength, O shameless harlot of Israel! Jehovah, when animating you with his thumb, was already looking at the ash heap where your puny bones will be pulverized along with your less corruptible jewels and the myriad of worms feasting on your flesh. Yuck! I prefer the odor of my excrement to the stench of your armpit, the tannery of the bear to the room where you sleep, and the corrosive fire of the mid-day sun to the heat of your breast. You laugh, Herodias, with the little demon at your side? You laugh adulteress, you laugh incestuous one, you laugh murderess? But these are the last days of your laughter, for behold the whirlwind which swallows Machaerus, the fortress of your debauches! And behold the King whose Queen you will no longer be. He lives, understand me? The Son of David, that your fathers were expecting. The days of Antipas are numbered. Tell him that. The Tetrarch will no longer be king.

Another at this moment is breathing, ama.s.sing in his breath the immortal wrath.

I see him, I feel him, I divine him. He's coming, calm and sure, and Machaerus is no more than a ruin haunted by nocturnal carrion. Antipas, a cadaver, his Jezebel, I don't know what I can call her, but on whom the jackal will feast!

HERODIAS: Kanthera, seize him! The Tetrarch will not let me be outraged. The rest of you arrest him!

KANTHERA: This crowd will hurl itself on us. Can't you hear it grumble?

HERODIAS: Let's return.

KANTHERA: The Tetrarch knows him and leaves him free, fearing a revolt.

HERODIAS: He's provoking it by leaving this man alive! Go on!

KANTHERA: (whispering to her) Hear me.

JOHN: O G.o.d, pity on me! I haven't tongue and I haven't breath! Give voice to this Sun, these palms, these mountains! What do you want of me, reed, and what word to utter to move this eyeless, earless and unintelligent people? A strange hunger rages in my belly. To be the lightning and to speak so as to cleave these hard skulls, which knowledge ravishes, and to put blood in these locked hearts!

I am ill with your spirit and suffering all the sorrow of childbirth. Horror!

Shall I say the word? And do you want me to condemn Israel? (Herodias and her escort have gone) People, hear what Jehovah, the Eternal, has commanded me to tell you. Israel has never known me. Israel is not my people. It nourishes idols in its breast. Israel entrusts itself to the descendants of Abraham, as if I could not make pebbles of the sons of Abraham, stones in which I would find greater docility and true belief! Israel has allowed itself to be saddled and bridled and has allowed foreign cavaliers to ride on my back. For golden oats in mangers of marble, it has given itself over to Kings who blaspheme my name, erecting altars and turpentine trees in all the high places and Pharisees who have blindfolded Israel's eyes and who amuse Israel with peas shaken in a bladder, and because Israel has rejected the cavalier Jehovah, who rode it bareback, without bridal or bit, guiding it only with the pressure of his knees, teaching it little by little the tireless allure which must give it the world and lead it surely to Eden, whose only path there is known to Jehovah alone.

Because Israel has preferred many masters to a single master, Jehovah has humiliated it under many yokes, he's rendered it puny, emaciated, ridiculous among nations; in a manner that at present Israel with its sparkling Jerusalem on its hill finds its exact image in this mare, Herodias, in this Jezebel, rawboned, painted, who whinnies at Machaerus, under a diseased rider! But you have exhausted my patience, says Jehovah! You have even exhausted my laughter, Jerusalem; the agony of Israel soothes my heart. I am going to send you a Messiah you weren't expecting, sick man! And the nations will rejoice over the one who will be the terror of Israel. You thought you were called, but it's been a long while, since I, Jehovah, repented! Did you take me for a complaisant spouse accepting the surplus profits of your prost.i.tution? Thief, did you expect to find in me the accomplice of your illicit commerce, taking the t.i.the of your usury from the blood and sweat of the poor? Did you think to corrupt me with your incense, with your Temple, with your music? Am I a G.o.d to be flattered, caressed, slept with? I am the G.o.d who made the Leviathan. I hold life in my right hand and death in my left. I have a whip of a hundred straps for the rebellious people. War and famine and all the plagues, I abandon to their will, I set them free. Let it snort its science and its sensuality. I laugh to see it bathe itself in death. Go, do your will, Israel. Go dance some more. I already hear the lugubrious laugh of the hyena living alone in Galilee, reigning in Jerusalem alone, and the howlings of the coyote who feasts in the ruins of the Holy of Holies.

CROWD: Pity! Pity!

JOHN: From North and South, from East and West, it's coming and rushing on; war, purveyors of vultures; in the turned up flap of her dress, she holds murder, arson and devastation. She sows, the good planter, the only grain called by your labors. Here she is, the companion of Christ, she's coming, she's coming, the servant of the Messiah; she's coming one day, the bold woman, into your houses and your hovels, she's coming to do the work of cleansing that you have too long deferred, rich and poor of Israel! And only the dwellings of those marked by sheep's blood will be spared. And here, War, will increase the roaring of widows and mothers, and the hymn of all nations glorifying the Christ by admiring your punishment, as Zion bleeds to death amidst the moving shroud of sand.

THE CROWD: Pity! Pity! Baptism! Ah, G.o.d! Ah! G.o.d!

JOHN: It's vain for you to clasp your infants to your hearts, O mothers, or to hide them in the arms of your husband, O wives, to raise your arms to heaven, old geezers, to scream pity, young girls. With a violent hand they will be torn from you, those children, those spouses, those lovers, and the burning breath of simoon that is running through the confines of the desert cannot hide from its grasp nor from its burning all this virile flesh which had eyes only for you, hands only for you, heart only to adore you, will only in the service of your swooning, that never puts on its glory except to make you scream with sensibility and to burst into weeping with lovers that have never known a shiver of fear except at the creaking of your sandals and the soft rustle of your skirts. Pity for you, women? Pity for them? Pitiless couple, couple absorbed in yourself, you never had pity for yourself nor for the man engulfed by your pleasure! Seeing you in your distress Adam fell. You would never have come close to your companion except with trembling, and you would have wept, shouted to G.o.d to see the terrible nursery of your work. O Israel, carefree people, you have begot children without bothering yourself to a.s.sure them the cares and vigilancy of a paternity less precarious than yours; and you taught them there is no other G.o.d except man, and that there is no other society but that of man, no other security but that of Kings, no other sweetness except in the embrace of a woman.

Then perish Israel for neglecting to adore on your knees, face in the dust, the imperishable force.

THE CROWD: (prostrate) Jehovah G.o.d, pity!

JOHN: Jehovah G.o.d, I seek your face!! How will I see the splendor of your Christ, how will I see him come down from the mountain enveloped by dawn, enshielded with light! Jerusalem of the pure, I admire you, Royal Zion, reverberating with canticles, immutable throne of a G.o.d who is the conqueror of death. Blessed Earth, Earth fecund in joy, immortal Canaan, sojourn of an Israel purified by fire, regenerated by spirit, behold my repenting flock, that I drive toward your pastures, and toward your shining waters! O nameless sweetness of living! Very sweet and musical face of a shepherd. Behold the humble ones I bring you! So as to give them incorruptible nourishment, here are the lamenters of Israel that I am bringing you to dry their tears and so you may make kings of them! (he comes down) THE CROWD: Baptism, O prophet, Baptism.

JOHN: Then descend into the Jordan and we will baptise you by the grace of Jehovah! Simon, Jonathan, Eleazer, immerse all those who present themselves to you. But know indeed, people, that Jehovah G.o.d is not a man to disappoint and that he demands, for admitting you to the elect of his Christ, complete repentance. Absolute subjection, without reserve, to his laws. Forget your will.

(Eleazer, Jonathan and Simon and many others leave.) A PUBLICAN: What must I do to be saved, Master?

JOHN: Who are you?

PUBLICAN: A contemptible man, a publican, a collector of taxes for the Romans.

JOHN: Practice your profession without fraud and may the money that soils your hands not attach itself to your heart. Keep yourself from being harsh to your brothers so that Jehovah won't be pitiless to you.

A SOLDIER: Master, will I be saved? What must I do?

JOHN: Soldier, earn your wages by serving those who pay you. Do exactly what is commanded but don't lend your arm to the wish for blood. For you, in the baseness of your condition, O mercenary, there are great reasons to hope.

SIMON: Who are you, you who baptise and insult your betters?