The Japanese Girl (33 page)

But it seemed darker outside the city; the great clouds like a tent and the moon hiding and the wind blowing keen in your face. I stumbled once or twice on the boulders, and once a goat stared up at me like a white devil, standing on the limestone path in front of me, long faced and soulless.

As I got to the top I could see that all the cross-beams of the crosses were down; from here the felons' grave was over the brow; and that
must
be a hint of dawn in the east, since the moon was now setting. I found the graves all right. They were only lightly filled in – a scattering of dry earth to keep the flies away, and in one shallow hole a knee and foot showed. I squatted beside it and shoved the earth away from where the head was likely to be, but the head I uncovered was a strange one and had been rotting there a week. I looked round and saw with disgust that there were eight or ten such graves, all in the same state. I hadn't thought that so many others had died of the same complaint and so recent; to find my friends meant a long and nasty search.

I sat for a time thinking, watching the dead light grow. Then I stood up. Friendship – well, it can go too far – and no good it would do them anyway. But there was one I could pay last respects to. Though not a friend. Never a friend. ‘Just as the stars are in the sky and the moon will rise …'

I shambled round the grisly skull of the hill and came to the cave-tomb from the east. The dawn was at my back. There was a great stone against the opening; but it was a different, more dignified resting place than a felon's grave. It had dignity. What any patriot deserved. Much more than I should ever have had. I put my back against the stone and my feet against the wall and slowly heaved it away. It was a weight like the weight of the world.

When I'd done I wiped the cold sweat off my face and went in. They had laid him on a wooden trestle in the centre of the cave, and they'd swathed him in white clothes. The cave was low and I had to bend to go in farther. I must say I felt peculiar bending over him: you know, it was as if I was bending over another part of myself: as if the spirit in me had died and lay mummified in the compass of this dead rock. For a little I forgot the spices in my pocket; just for a little I had to see this other face. I dragged the cloths away, and it seemed to me suddenly that the cloths were not cold. I touched the face, and although it was cold I thought to myself that it was not cold
enough
. It was not cold enough for dead.

God, it was as if an earthquake had happened inside me. I didn't think – not properly reason, that is – I didn't think, but through me like a spear went words like: not dead – not dead but liveth – done to death by Sadducees – buried by Sadducees – but what now – what contrivance was this? – not dead but liveth – by whose grace does he live?

It didn't ever make even as much sense as that; only
one
thought really came through – get him out of here – out of the cold of the tomb, out of the cold of death into the warmth of the living earth and the sun. Not caring about spirit or any of that side, not at the moment the spiritual; just life in the human body.

So I grabbed the body round the waist and carried it to the mouth of the cave-tomb. It was heavy with a
dead
weight, but I carried it just as easily as one carries the living. When I got to the entrance I saw that day had half come on us while I was inside, but still grey with cloud. The swifts were flying against the light of dawn. I stood with the weight on my shoulder looking round the hillside, trying to think what to do next. And then, in the silence, I heard a footstep …

… I leaned against the opening of the tomb and let the burden slide from my shoulders. I stood there frozen like a stiff one myself in the half light, and then a woman came round the side of the boulder. I just knew her, by her long black hair, even in that light. One of Jesus Bar-Joseph's closest friends.

We saw each other more or less at the same second. I reckoned she had had much the same idea as myself, because she carried a bag that was probably spices and oils; but she dropped this on seeing me.

‘Mary,' I said, ‘Mary of Magdala,' and took a half-step, and then looked towards the burden I'd let slip down among the stones.

I think she couldn't have seen this, because she suddenly collapsed to the ground herself and said only one word: ‘Rabboni!' Rabboni: that means Master. I knew then that she'd made a mistake, and I mumbled: ‘No, Mary. Look again. But I believe your Jesus lives nevertheless …' But before I could say more she had scrambled to her feet and was running away across the hillside like someone was after her. ‘Mary!' I shouted. ‘Mary!' But there was no stopping her.

It was quiet after that, and in the full dawn even the wind was quiet. Jerusalem was just below us on the side of the hill, smoke beginning to rise from some of the houses. To the right the Mount of Olives; beyond that the valley leading to Jordan. I bent and struggled the body of the prophet on to my shoulder again. It seemed to sigh as I picked it up.

With this on my shoulder, with this burden, I turned away from Jerusalem and began to tramp heavily downhill towards the road to Bethany. If Jesus Bar-Joseph was really still alive, this was the only safe place for him, not anywhere in Jerusalem. At Bethany he'd have a chance to get his wounds anointed and he could rest and stay hidden. I walked to the bottom of the hill, and then saw a group of pilgrims just emerging from the city gates on their way home after the feast. If I was seen it would mean trouble.

A hundred metres from the road, at the foot of the hill, there is a cave, another cave; so I turned in there and laid the prophet down on the ground, well towards the back where there was a stretch of fine gravel. And I crouched near the front to watch the pilgrims past. They were very slow in coming, walking with two asses, an old man bringing up the rear. But if there was hope for the prophet there would be need, and urgent need. I went back, into the shadowy back of the cave.

I looked at his face. I remembered it well. I looked at his face as if it was my face. Suffering had taken the lines away – or maybe they'd never
been
there. It hadn't the lines mine had. Everything on mine showed, I sometimes thought: the danger, the combats, the scheming, the knife thrusts. His hadn't got those lines. It was a face that had lost touch with earth. It was still like mine, but with all the evil gone. It was maybe like every man's with all the evil gone. It was pale with the pallor of death and at the same time the pallor of purity.

The skin of the forehead was badly scratched, the hair matted over it. I pushed the hair away. The skin was cold, the mark of the scratches black, like writing on a scroll. I touched the skin again. It was cold – but was it cold enough? Had my sense of touch cheated me in the greater coldness of that other cave? Some of the wrappings of the body had fallen away in the tomb, but I pulled aside the rest and felt for the heart. There was no sign.

I squatted on my haunches and looked out and watched the pilgrims go past. But there would be others. Today of all days this road would be constantly peopled with pilgrims leaving the city. If he
was
dead I couldn't take the body back, because I'd surely be seen now and I'd be condemned for defilement – by my own folk not by Rome. If I was to go on with the fight for our national freedom, I couldn't afford this sort of blot on my reputation, that I'd taken the body of this holy man out of his tomb. If I left him here he might be found, or he might never be found.

But if he was
not
dead …

I thought I heard a sigh, and swung round in a flash to look at the body. It hadn't moved, yet I felt as if something was about it – a ghost, or the ghost of a spirit, or the spirit of a man or the spirit of a god. I put my fingers again on the forehead, and this time it
was
more cold. I'll swear there was a difference, as if the slight warmth of the day was showing up the utter coldness of the tomb. It was as if the last life was moving away, had moved away, had left while I squatted there muttering in the half dark.

A hell of a sadness came over me. I felt as if I'd lost something personal to myself – as if I'd lost the best that was in me, the best that was in all men. I knew now that in that moment when I'd thought him alive I'd wanted above all for him to live on. I'd wanted to carry him over my shoulder, wounded but triumphant, down the slope to Bethany. I wanted him to recover to lead our people, all people maybe, out of the valley of oppression and servitude, out of the valley of the shadow.

Just for a while I forgot my hatred of our oppressors, and my ambition to lead our nation out of its own servitude. It was as if I'd got my ideas crossed there in the cave, and for a while even national liberation wasn't important measured against the importance of the man who had just gone.

Confused as I was, I felt I would have died in his place, instead of him in mine, if he could have gone on leading people the way he had been leading them, towards a new life.

Again I was full of a sense of
disappointment
– only this time it was much worse, much, much worse. I had thought I could bring him alive to Bethany. I had thought I was going to do that and now I could not. Maybe he
had
been alive when I found him – the last spark lingering – but now the last spark had gone out.

I began to weep. Believe it or not, I sat down on a stone there in the mouth of the cave and blubbered like a child. I wept for myself and for my generation and for generations yet unborn. For there, it seemed to me, with or without the grace of God, went we all.

First published in 1971 by Collins

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Copyright © Winston Graham, 1971

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