(The women appear in the doorway.) CLEOPHAS: Let's go! We are in G.o.d's hands.

LAZARUS: Let's go. Life isn't on this side of the tomb.

(Exit all.) CURTAIN.

SCENE VII. GOLGOTHA.

(Enter Judas.) JUDAS: He rises and I fall. We didn't have any choice. He was born to be just; I was born to for what? Nothing. How foolish it is; no one can disobey the demon who receives us as we leave the maternal womb. Jehovah, who created the two of us said, "This one will speak as a prophet and die as a prophet. This one will follow him for a while blindly; and then the scales will fall from his eyes and he will choke in his last sin." David appeared. From the first day of his life, light was his share and fate. And Saul, strong and valiant and handsome as he lived in shadows and died in shadows. Here he is unrecognizable. Him! Scarlet and crowned with what? The King. I did that! No. There's the Eternal, Jehovah, who knows what he's doing; we are in his hands to execute the decisions of his mind. Yes Earth! Oh! He's scratching out my eyes. He can't see me bent over like that. He can see nothing blinded by blood. Flee! To be the innocent stones which roll under his feet; innocent! Not to hear the voice which dazzles in my ears, the bitter voice of despair. Strike! Strike him! He's going to fall.

Strike! Jehovah is mute. Nothing budges. I will gorge my heart with this vision and let it die in its pleasure.

(He hides in the trees. Enter Jesus, the Centurion and some soldiers. Simon of Cyrene, Magdalene, Veronica, Martha, and other women. John, Nicodemus, Joseph, Daniel, soldiers and servants of the Temple, Cleophas and Nathan.) CENTURION: Come on! Hurry, man! You aren't moving.

JESUS: Abba! Abba!

CENTURION: March!

JESUS: My Father, have you abandoned me? (fainting) I can't do any more, brother. Pity!

CENTURION: March, I tell you!

JESUS: Pity, brother! This cross is heavy and blood is blinding me. Let me rest a short moment on my hands and knees. I am weak and I think I am going to faint or die!

CENTURION: Up there! Come on, one more effort and we will be there.

A SOLDIER: March! Do you think we are going to carry the King of the Jews on our shoulders?

CENTURION: Let him breathe a minute.

DANIEL: You see! Now behold the one who gave himself out as the Son of Jehovah G.o.d! There's the Messiah that you were following! He bleeds like a man and he weeps like a woman.

THE CROWD: Death to the Messiah! The Impostor! The Liar!

CENTURION: They don't love you, your subjects.

JESUS: They don't know what they are doing, CENTURION: As for you, you know even less. What were you doing to have deserved a promenade like this in the heat, with a hundred pounds on your back and a rest that's awaiting you on the summit? All the same, you don't seem like a bad man to me.

A SOLDIER: A lunatic.

ANOTHER: Who are these women here? Unveil yourselves a little, gorgeous! Do we interest you?

CENTURION: Or the King on all fours! What do you want, my pretty?

VERONICA: I beg you Lord, allow me to wipe the face of the poor condemned.

CENTURION: He's one of your friends, my child?

VERONICA: Lord, he never did evil to anyone. Indeed, will you ?

CENTURION: Do it, child. It's curious to be hated to this degree by men and loved so grandly by women. Listen to them weep and sob under their veils. You'd say there were no more mothers, or sisters, or mistresses, all these statues of desolation? See how she tenderly wipes the face of this Adonis. By Venus and the Graces, it's touching.

DANIEL: It's a scandal! Make him move, Centurion.

CENTURION: Are you jealous, old man? Calm yourself. Things won't go on much longer. In less than an hour they won't be able to admire him any more, all naked on his wood.

A SOLDIER: Flavius, pa.s.s me your gourd. I am dying of thirst.

WOMEN: Ah! Lord! Ah, G.o.d! Alas!

JESUS: Women, don't weep for me. Weep for yourselves and for them! The time is near when mothers will envy those whose entrails are sterile. Weep for yourselves, daughters of Jerusalem. For a man who is dying today you will mourn tomorrow for having given day to man. (to Simon) Thanks, brother. Let's go so that everything may be accomplished.

CENTURION: March! Women, get back! You've been warned not to have children!

SOLDIERS: Ah! Ah! Now's the moment to give oneself over, since after us, the end of the world.

(Exeunt Jesus and the Roman soldiers.) DANIEL: I am returning to the city, Selomith. Be present at the execution of the sentence together with the soldiers and the servants of the Temple. Then come give us an account of the last moments of this rogue and the att.i.tude of the people. For my part, I am edified. Having seen what I've seen I don't have the least doubt as to the justice of the sentence. Nicodemus, Joseph, are you accompanying me?

NICODEMUS: Excuse me, Daniel; however cruel the spectacle may be, I intend to see it. Pilate recognized that this was a just man. I intend to see how the just die.

JOSEPH: It's just not every day a just man dies in Jerusalem.

NICODEMUS: Where ten men die daily.

(They leave in different directions: Nicodemus, Joseph, Daniel and the Jews.) JOHN: I will follow him. I will have his last look.

CLEOPHAS: And if he was only an impostor?

JOHN: I loved him.

NATHAN: Let's follow him to the end. I no longer believe; I cannot believe.

CLEOPHAS: What, Nathan?

NATHAN: That all powerful Jehovah won't perform a miracle. I cannot believe that Jesus is dying.

CLEOPHAS: Alas, didn't I hear it, that sigh? "Father, have you abandoned me?"

JOHN: All flesh is weak, Cleophas. The flesh sighs but the spirit, the spirit soars.

(Exeunt the women and the disciples.) MAGDALENE: Martha, will you be as strong?

MARTHA: Unto death!

MAGDALENE: Come then, sister. Lean on my arm.

JUDAS: (entering) Stay, Magdalene; I have a word to say to you.

MAGDALENE: Well, accompany us up there, Judas.

JUDAS: My place isn't up there and I must speak to you. Refuse: I am dying.

MAGDALENE: You have a strange look. Go, Martha, rejoin Veronica. I won't be long, but there is a charitable duty here.

(Exit Martha.) JUDAS: Why do you want to go up there? It's not a spectacle for your eyes.

MAGDALENE: My eyes have seen so many spectacles that weren't for them.

JUDAS: What's the good of wanting to weep?

MAGDALENE: One doesn't get one's salvation by laughing. Laughter agreed with the frivolus girl of Magdala; it doesn't set with the serving girl of Jesus.

JUDAS: But he's dying. You don't owe him any more service if you ever did owe him any.

MAGDALENE: Women like us, we don't forget those that we loved. Watch, Eternal One, Our Father, take me from the world the day I shall forget him.

JUDAS: You owe yourself to the living.

MAGDALENE: So long as I will live, and so long as my brother and my Sister live, I will willingly serve them. In the name of Jesus, their friend, they gave me mercy, without any reproach, and they pardoned me as he pardoned me.

JUDAS: They pardoned you! Martha and Lazarus only pardoned you with their mouth; they haven't opened their door to you, keeping their hearts quite shut. And the one who wished to be loved didn't love anybody, didn't give himself to anyone.

MAGDALENE: Judas, he's dying for us.

JUDAS: What?

MAGDALENE: I feel he's dying for us.

JUDAS: Madwoman! He's dying because he didn't know how to cheat death. And at the last moment, when he names his father, Jehovah hasn't aided him. Neither he nor anyone can know the obscure will of Jehovah. The Just and the Unjust go to death by ways unforseen; if this one had been able to see that his preaching would lead him to Calvary and crucifixion, do you think he would have played the role of the Son of David? He believed in that kingdom and that Jehovah would help him to found his kingdom. Jehovah only wanted to see one more prophet die.

MAGDALENE: Oh! Judas. The cross is up.

JUDAS: Bearing its fruit. Stop and don't look that way. Tell me, if it only required a word to save him, wouldn't you say that word?

MAGDALENE: Oh! Yes! If I were to die of it.

JUDAS: He will die regardless of what you say! And your death won't enable him to walk on earth again. As for me, I said a word to save you. I saw you were in love with a shadow; mad over a dream; lost because of a dream king. And, scorning my soul and the peace of my of my soul, and the peace of my future days and what you name salvation, I said: Let him die! This vision that you see. It's necessary for a human being to tell me, to excuse me, to absolve me.

MAGDALENE: Judas! Unfortunate! Have I really understood you?

JUDAS: Yes. His death is my work. Let's be humble: the work of Jehovah and the Iscariot.

MAGDALENE: O treason! O treason! O treason!

JUDAS: And Jehovah, the author of this treason, of all the other treasons of the Book, and all the deaths of the prophets and the crimes of the kings.

MAGDALENE: You are Cain!

JUDAS: Son of Adam; Son of G.o.d! But this one is not Abel. A liar, an impostor who deceived the Israelite people, and again disappointed a grand hope. The Messiah and he's dying? May all those perish who mislead us and lead us to the slaughterhouse! They are great criminals.

MAGDALENE: Your friend! He was your friend!

JUDAS: I know nothing; I don't want to hear anything. The vapor and the scream of blood are filling all the chambers of my skull; my ears are buzzing as if I were drowning. I'm perishing. Save me!

MAGDALENE: May G.o.d pardon me; I can only regard you with horror.

JUDAS: He deceived me; I betrayed him.

MAGDALENE: You never loved him.

JUDAS: I don't know how to love. It's not a question of loving in the Law or in the Prophets. I would have been able to obey him if he had commanded. The Ancient Lord of Israel, the All-Powerful, knew how to make himself obeyed. As for me, I am a Jew, not a Samaritan, not a Galilean with a tender heart. A Jew with a hard skull and a rough neck. You've got to speak to me in thunder claps.

They promised us Canaan and we forced the frontiers at the point of the sword.

The Eternal kept all his promises; there's only one left. We must rule all the nations with a Messiah; a king is owed us. That's promised. The Eternal cannot perjure himself. How can I pardon this Galilean who has only multiplied prodigies the better to deceive us? I cannot pardon; I don't know how to love.

The Law commands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This one makes us offer the left cheek after the right cheek is smitten. He contradicts the Law.

To annul the Law you must be above the Law. He is submitting to it at this hour.

He was not the Messiah. Jehovah, The Eternal, doesn't know him. Indeed, I don't know how he was able to seduce so many poor folks. But he speaks as if he were the truth. But it's a voice too sweet for my ears. I tell you for me he needs to thunder, and the column of flame and the pillar of fog must be visible. Woman, I haven't betrayed. It was something which outstrips me. I could only obey. Woman, why don't you understand me? I could love you, yes, you, despite your pale mouth and the starry wrinkles in the corners of your eyes, and your fat body, certain that I could possess an object of desire, a living reality. I cannot love him because he only awakened in me an impossible desire, for a perfection, for a purity, for a triumph that isn't inclined toward my spirit, that my hands cannot and never will be able to grasp. Thinking of it, this drives me mad. I cling to the earth by my entrails. Woman, woman I confess my crime. I killed him. I don't know why. Don't flee me scornfully or I will die.

MAGDALENE: Come with me up there. Come ask pardon of him, from him.

JUDAS: He's only a man! I don't care about his pardon. His pardon would be a shower of fire to me. But me, you have sinned; understand my sin.

MAGDALENE: Come up there.

JUDAS: No.

MAGDALENE: Goodbye.

JUDAS: Magdalene.

MAGDALENE: Jesus! I'm coming. Away from me! Don't touch me, accursed!

(Exit Magdalene.) JUDAS: Repulsed! By the worst of men, by the worst of women. Down! Down! Soil, absorb me! Shadows, engulf me! Death, you, you alone, final wish. Oh! This intolerable light, the gra.s.shoppers. Cursed be my father and my mother, and you, Jehovah! And you, Galilean! And the priests and Israel! And myself. This money, let them take it back. Yuck! No need for money to purchase death. A rope, a ruined tree. I vomit life, I vomit myself. The Sun (the stages darkens to shadows) is dead! May G.o.d be cursed! May the world be cursed!

CONFUSED VOICES: Ah! ah! ah! ah!

JUDAS: More nothing! Emptiness! There's no more of anything. I am the last man living among ghosts. Let me find a tree. Let me return this money.

CONFUSED VOICES: Ah! ah! ah! ah!

BLACKOUT.

SCENE VIII. THE PILGRIMS.

(The shadows slowly dissipate. The hall of an inn can be seen. A door open on the twilight. Cleophas, Nathan and a stranger enter.) CLEOPHAS: No, Emmanuel, dear traveling companion, don't leave us. We will sup together and we will spend the night in this inn.