The Man Who Died (3 page)

She was thrown out of the balance of her rapturous, anguished adoration.
This risen man was the death of her dream.

"You should go now," he said to her. "Do not touch me, I am in death. I
shall come again here, on the third day. Come if you will, at dawn. And
we will speak again."

She went away, perturbed and shattered. Yet as she went, her mind
discarded the bitterness of the reality, and she conjured up rapture and
wonder, that the Master was risen and was not dead. He was risen, the
Saviour, the exalter, the wonder–worker! He was risen, but not as man; as
pure God, who should not be touched by flesh, and who should be rapt away
into Heaven. It was the most glorious and most ghostly of the miracles.

Meanwhile the man who had died gathered himself together at last, and
slowly made his way to the peasant's house. He was glad to go back to
them, and away from Madeleine and his own associates. For the peasants
had the inertia of earth and would let him rest, and as yet, would put
no compulsion on him.

The woman was on the roof, looking for him. She was afraid that he had
gone away. His presence in the house had become like gentle wine to her.
She hastened to the door, to him.

"Where have you been?" she said. "Why did you go away?"

"I have been to walk in a garden, and I have seen a friend, who gave me a
little money. It is for you."

He held out his thin hand, with the small amount of money, all that
Madeleine could give him. The peasant's wife's eyes glistened, for money
was scarce, and she said:

"Oh, master! And is it truly mine?"

"Take it!" he said. "It buys bread, and bread brings life."

So he lay down in the yard again, sick with relief at being alone again.
For with the peasants he could be alone, but his own friends would never
let him be alone. And in the safety of the yard, the young cock was dear
to him, as it shouted in the helpless zest of life, and finished in the
helpless humiliation of being tied by the leg. This day the ass stood
swishing her tail under the shed. The man who had died lay down and
turned utterly away from life, in the sickness of death in life.

But the woman brought wine and water, and sweetened cakes, and roused
him, so that he ate a little, to please her. The day was hot, and as she
crouched to serve him, he saw her breasts sway from her humble body,
under her smock. He knew she wished he would desire her, and she was
youngish, and not unpleasant. And he, who had never known a woman, would
have desired her if he could. But he could not want her, though he felt
gently towards her soft, crouching, humble body. But it was her thoughts,
her consciousness, he could not mingle with. She was pleased with the
money, and now she wanted to take more from him. She wanted the embrace
of his body. But her little soul was hard, and short–sighted, and
grasping, her body had its little greed, and no gentle reverence of the
return gift. So he spoke a quiet, pleasant word to her and turned away.
He could not touch the little, personal body, the little, personal life
of this woman, nor in any other. He turned away from it without
hesitation.

Risen from the dead, he had realised at last that the body, too, has its
little life, and beyond that, the greater life. He was virgin, in recoil
from the little, greedy life of the body. But now he knew that virginity
is a form of greed; and that the body rises again to give and to take, to
take and to give, ungreedily. Now he knew that he had risen for the
woman, or women, who knew the greater life of the body, not greedy to
give, not greedy to take, and with whom he could mingle his body. But
having died, he was patient, knowing there was time, an eternity of time.
And he was driven by no greedy desire, either to give himself to others,
or to grasp anything for himself. For he had died.

The peasant came home from work and said:

"Master, I thank you for the money. But we did not want it. And all I
have is yours."

But the man who had died was sad, because the peasant stood there in the
little, personal body, and his eyes were cunning and sparkling with the
hope of greater rewards in money later on. True, the peasant had taken
him in free, and had risked getting no reward. But the hope was cunning
in him. Yet even this was as men are made. So when the peasant would have
helped him to rise, for night had fallen, the man who had died said:

"Don't touch me, brother. I am not yet risen to the Father."

The sun burned with greater splendour, and burnished the young cock
brighter. But the peasant kept the string renewed, and the bird was a
prisoner. Yet the flame of life burned up to a sharp point in the cock,
so that it eyed askance and haughtily the man who had died. And the man
smiled and held the bird dear, and he said to it:

"Surely thou art risen to the Father, among birds." And the young cock,
answering, crowed.

When at dawn on the third morning the man went to the garden, he was
absorbed, thinking of the greater life of the body, beyond the little,
narrow, personal life. So he came through the thick screen of laurel and
myrtle bushes, near the rock, suddenly, and he saw three women near the
tomb. One was Madeleine, and one was the woman who had been his mother,
and the third was a woman he knew, called Joan. He looked up, and saw
them all, and they saw him, and they were all afraid.

He stood arrested in the distance, knowing they were there to claim him
back, bodily. But he would in no wise return to them. Pallid, in the
shadow of a grey morning that was blowing to rain, he saw them, and
turned away. But Madeleine hastened towards him.

"I did not bring them," she said. "They have come of themselves. See, I
have brought you money!…Will you not speak to them?"

She offered him some gold pieces, and he took them, saying:

"May I have this money? I shall need it. I cannot speak to them, for I am
not yet ascended to the Father. And I must leave you now."

"Ah! Where will you go?" she cried.

He looked at her, and saw she was clutching for the man in him who had
died and was dead, the man of his youth and his mission, of his chastity
and his fear, of his little life, his giving without taking.

"I must go to my Father!" he said.

"And you will leave us? There is your mother!" she cried, turning round
with the old anguish, which yet was sweet to her.

"But now I must ascend to my Father," he said, and he drew back into the
bushes, and so turned quickly, and went away, saying to himself:

"Now I belong to no one and have no connection, and mission or gospel is
gone from me. Lo! I cannot make even my own life, and what have I to
save?…I can learn to be alone."

So he went back to the peasants' house, to the yard where the young cock
was tied by the leg with a string. And he wanted no one, for it was best
to be alone; for the presence of people made him lonely. The sun and the
subtle salve of spring healed his wounds, even the gaping wound of
disillusion through his bowels was closing up. And his need of men and
women, his fever to have them and to be saved by them, this too was
healing in him. Whatever came of touch between himself and the race of
men, henceforth, should come without trespass or compulsion. For he said
to himself:

"I tried to compel them to live, so they compelled me to, die. It is
always so, with compulsion. The recoil kills the advance. Now is my time
to be alone."

Therefore he went no more to the garden, but lay still and saw the sun,
or walked at dusk across the olive slopes, among the green wheat, that
rose a palm–breadth higher every sunny day. And always he thought to
himself:

'How good it is to have fulfilled my mission, and to be beyond it. Now I
can be alone, and leave all things to themselves, and the fig tree may be
barren if it will, and the rich may be rich. My way is my own alone.'

So the green jets of leaves unspread on the fig tree, with the bright,
translucent, green blood of the tree. And the young cock grew brighter,
more lustrous with the sun's burnishing; yet always tied by the leg with
a string. And the sun went down more and more in pomp, out of the gold
and red–flushed air. The man who had died was aware of it all, and he
thought:

'The Word is but the midge that bites at evening. Man is tormented with
words like midges, and they follow him right into the tomb. But beyond
the tomb they cannot go. Now I have passed the place where words can bite
no more and the air is clear, and there is nothing to say, and I am alone
within my own skin, which is the walls of all my domain.'

So he healed of his wounds, and enjoyed his immortality of being alive
without fret. For in the tomb he had slipped that noose which we call
care. For in the tomb he had left his striving self, which cares and
asserts itself. Now his uncaring self healed and became whole within his
skin, and he smiled to himself with pure aloneness, which is one sort of
immortality.

Then he said to himself: "I will wander the earth, and say nothing. For
nothing is so marvellous as to be alone in the phenomenal world, which is
raging, and yet apart. And I have not seen it, I was too much blinded by
my confusion within it. Now I will wander among the stirring of the
phenomenal world, for it is the stirring of all things among themselves
which leaves me purely alone."

So he communed with himself, and decided to be a physician. Because the
power was still in him to heal any man or child who touched his
compassion. Therefore he cut his hair and his beard after the right
fashion, and smiled to himself. And he bought himself shoes, and the
right mantle, and put the right cloth over his head, hiding all the
little scars. And the peasant said:

"Master, will you go forth from us?"

"Yes, for the time is come for me to return to men."

So he gave the peasant a piece of money, and said to him:

"Give me the cock that escaped and is now tied by the leg. For he
shall go forth with me."

So for a piece of money the peasant gave the cock to the man who had
died, and at dawn the man who had died set out into the phenomenal world,
to be fulfilled in his own loneliness in the midst of it. For previously
he had been too much mixed up in it. Then he had died. Now he must come
back, to be alone in the midst. Yet even now he did not go quite alone,
for under his arm, as he went, he carried the cock, whose tail fluttered
gaily behind, and who craned his head excitedly, for he too was
adventuring out for the first time into the wider phenomenal world, which
is the stirring of the body of cocks also. And the peasant woman shed a
few tears, but then went indoors, being a peasant, to look again at the
pieces of money. And it seemed to her, a gleam came out of the pieces of
money, wonderful.

The man who had died wandered on, and it was a sunny day. He looked
around as he went, and stood aside as the pack–train passed by, towards
the city. And he said to himself:

"Strange is the phenomenal world, dirty and clean together! And I am the
same. Yet I am apart! And life bubbles variously. Why should I have
wanted it to bubble all alike? What a pity I preached to them! A sermon
is so much more likely to cake into mud, and to close the fountains, than
is a psalm or a song. I made a mistake. I understand that they executed
me for preaching to them. Yet they could not finally execute me, for now
I am risen in my own aloneness, and inherit the earth, since I lay no
claim on it. And I will be alone in the seethe of all things; first and
foremost, for ever, I shall be alone. But I must toss this bird into the
seethe of phenomena, for he must ride his wave. How hot he is with life!
Soon, in some place, I shall leave him among the hens. And perhaps one
evening I shall meet a woman who can lure my risen body, yet leave me my
aloneness. For the body of my desire has died, and I am not in touch
anywhere. Yet how do I know! All at least is life. And this cock gleams
with bright aloneness, though he answers the lure of hens. And I shall
hasten on to that village on the hill ahead of me; already I am tired and
weak, and want to close my eyes to everything."

Hastening a little with the desire to have finished going, he overtook
two men going slowly, and talking. And being soft–footed, he heard they
were speaking of himself. And he remembered them, for he had known them
in his life, the life of his mission. So he greeted them, but did not
disclose himself in the dusk, and they did not know him. He said to them:

"What then of him who would be king, and was put to death for it?"

They answered suspiciously: "Why ask you of him?"

"I have known him, and thought much about him," he said.

So they replied: "He has risen."

"Yea! And where is he, and how does he live?"

"We know not, for it is not revealed. Yet he is risen, and in a little
while will ascend unto the Father."

"Yea! And where then is his Father?"

"Know ye not? You are then of the Gentiles! The Father is in Heaven,
above the cloud and the firmament."

"Truly? Then how will he ascend?"

"As Elijah the Prophet, he shall go up in a glory."

"Even into the sky."

"Into the sky."

"Then is he not risen in the flesh?"

"He is risen in the flesh."

"And will he take flesh up into the sky?"

"The Father in Heaven will take him up."

The man who had died said no more, for his say was over, and words beget
words, even as gnats. But the man asked him: "Why do you carry a cock?"

"I am a healer," he said, "and the bird hath virtue."

"You are not a believer?"

"Yea! I believe the bird is full of life and virtue."

They walked on in silence after this, and he felt they disliked his
answer. So he smiled to himself, for a dangerous phenomenon in the world
is a man of narrow belief, who denies the right of his neighbour to be
alone. And as they came to the outskirts of the village, the man who had
died stood still in the gloaming and said in his old voice: