Remember Why You Fear Me (56 page)

One day a man came into his shop, bullish, angry. He told Jesus
his
name. “You say that as if it should mean something to me.”

“I’m the husband of ____,” he said, and it was another name he didn’t know. “You bastard. You fucking bastard.” And he hit Jesus. And then he hit him again.

Jesus didn’t even remember picking up the nail. His return punches were so feeble it just seemed the only thing that might give his silly little fist a bit of
power.
It stuck deep into the husband’s throat. He croaked at Jesus disbelievingly, saw the blood dripping. He pulled out the nail, and that was a mistake—there was so much
more
blood after that, and the husband made a foolhardy attempt to put the nail
back
, he looked like an idiot, swaying there on his feet, a nail between his fingers he didn’t know how to use. It seemed to Jesus as if offered it to him—you’re the carpenter, what do you do with this?—before the man’s strength gave way and he went to the ground.

Jesus waited with the husband whilst he died. He vaguely thought he should do something to ease the pain, even to comfort him a little. But, he supposed, he wasn’t that nice a person. He wondered if he should run, but run where? All he had was his shop, that was a decision he’d made long ago. He supposed he could plead self-defence, but, thinking it through, this dying husband had been the one defending himself, defending his honour and the law.

He listened quietly at the trial. He was an adulterer and a murderer. There was nothing to disagree with. He was asked his name. “Jesus Christ,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” they said angrily, and
told
him his name. Oh yes, that was it. He wondered why, if they already knew what it was, why they’d asked him in the first place.

When they told him he was to be crucified he threw up.

He screamed as they whipped him, he cried as he carried the cross. And could hardly help but give a shriek of agony as they drove the nails into his limbs. But as they raised the cross upright, he realized that through all the pain he could do what he’d learned throughout this second life, and keep quiet.

Unlike that poor feller they’d put next to him. Who couldn’t stop shouting, begging for the pain to stop, saying it had all been a mistake.

The first time he’d been crucified it had, of course, been terrible. But even as he’d suffered, he’d known that that was the
point.
That this sacrifice would mean everything, that through this heroic death the world would be changed. What made this second crucifixion all the more bitter was that it was without meaning, his death just like his life, meaningless, and his name would be forgotten just as he himself had already forgotten it. Jesus Christ had been luckier than him. There was no heroism here.

“If you’re so powerful,” said a voice on the wind, “then why don’t you just save yourself?” Jesus realized that the screaming from his neighbour had stopped, thought at first the words were coming from him. But no, from one cross further down. And then, of course, Jesus knew exactly who was being crucified beside him. That Jesus Christ, he was one smart feller.

He looked at himself, his former self. The
better
Jesus Christ. The blood, the crown of thorns. The words above his head, King of the Jews. He felt a wave of anger at him, this Jesus with a purpose. But then pity. This handsome man, this leader of men, who had been able to inspire people with the same truths that he couldn’t.

“Leave him alone,” said the second Jesus. “He’s done nothing to deserve this. But we have. Well,” and he thought of the woman he loved, and of how shameful that had been, and the violence it had caused—and he thought that with all the greatness in his heart how little his life had meant, how he’d squandered everything—“I know I have, anyway.”

Jesus looked at Jesus, and in that moment Jesus saw that he would have followed Jesus, right to the ends of the earth. And Jesus thanked him, and said, “Today you shall sit by my side in Paradise.”

Well, thought Jesus the murderer, as he closed his eyes and died. That would be nice. Here’s hoping.

Oh, for God’s sake, thought Jesus. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Again as a baby, another set of parents staring down at him. Already loving him, hoping he’ll be their special one. He glared at them as they fussed around the umbilical cord. Where was the knife, oh dear, shall we cut it now? Give me the bloody knife, thought Jesus impatiently, I’ll bloody do it myself. And he all but snatched it from them, and he’d have managed it too if his newly birthed body hadn’t been so feeble, and all the adults looked at him and laughed, and the rabbi said that if he wasn’t careful he’d be out of a job, and Jesus hated them, he fixed them all with a mature stare and hated them all completely.

The offer, he thought. The offer that was made to me on the cross. I made the wrong decision.

As a child he flirted with the idea of killing himself. He’d stand at the top of precipices, not sure whether today was the day he’d jump, hoping for some strong gust of wind that would take the choice out of his hands. But he knew really he was just too
angry
to die, he’d be
damned
if he’d let this ridiculous fucking world he was having to sit through for the third fucking time get the better of him. If he were going to die, he might as well do it enjoying himself. He began to drink. In all honesty, he didn’t much like the taste of it, and he didn’t like the inebriation—but there was a midway point where the taste didn’t matter anymore and he could still think straight that felt increasingly tolerable. His parents loved him, and worried for him—and he’d fly into a rage whenever that love and worry became too obvious. “I didn’t ask to be born,” he’d rail at them like an infant. They shyly hoped that he might find a job in the synagogue—that little anecdote with the rabbi which had been trotted out at every single fucking Hanukkah dinner had taken on an almost prophetic significance to them. But he wanted nothing to do with religion. He considered carpentry—looked at the wood, looked at the tools, contemplated the joy of creating purpose out of chaos, blah blah. And then he said, no, sod that, he’d rather be a thief instead. He practised thieving on his mother and father, and one day, when he decided he’d got the knack of it pretty much down pat, left the house and never saw them again.

The irony was that Jesus III had much of the charisma that Jesus II had so longed for. He’d hate people on sight; he’d judge them and detest them for the simplest of reasons—he didn’t like their faces, their hair, the way they walked, the way they talked. But he was able to bury this hatred whenever it suited him. It almost became a game—he’d meet someone new, he’d charm them with an easy smile, and all the time he’d be thinking gleefully,
hate you, hate you, hate you.
Some days he would tire of the game and just growl at everybody he met. But he realized that in the matter of women he slept with—and he slept with a
lot
, there were so many to be had—it was important to get the order right: charm first, growl afterwards. For a while Jesus told himself that he was looking for the same woman he’d slept with when he’d been a shy carpenter. And then he told himself he was just looking for the same sensations she’d inspired. And then he gave up on that and just fucked them for the sheer hell of it.

He realized that somewhere out there were his previous selves. One day he went into the shop owned by Jesus II. He thought, in a moment of drunken hilarity, that it might be fun to go and rob himself. But when he stood in front of the little carpenter, and saw just how small and meaningless he had been, he felt a wave of nausea and left without saying a word. He didn’t have the same scruples about Jesus I. Of course he knew exactly when and where to find him preaching, and he’d turn up early, always getting a good position at the front. Jesus would tell him his little sermons, and everyone who heard them would love them, and all the thief could hear was just how
little
this Messiah knew—whilst here
he
was, pissed on brandy, and he knew three times as much. “Hey, Jesus,” he’d call out. “When you’re on the cross, when they nail you to that fucking cross. And they will, you bastard. You know it and I know it.” People would try to stop him shouting, but he’d have none of it, on he’d go—“When the offer comes, when you hear the offer. Just say yes. The correct answer is definitely
yes.
”

He carried on stealing. He got very good at it. He discovered that it required a sleight of hand that was genuinely artistic. At times he felt as he had done when he’d been a carpenter, taking pride in creating something out of nothing, in the delight of a job well done. Then he’d laugh at himself bitterly and go and get drunk. Of course, they caught him in the end. He only wondered why it had taken them so long.

This time, he thought, I’m not going to scream. But scream he did. When the nails went in there was no way of stopping it. He looked across at Jesus I, screaming up there beside him. Couldn’t resist a final dig. “If you’re so powerful, then why don’t you save yourself? And save me whilst you’re at it.” Jesus II tried to offer words of comfort to the Messiah, and Jesus III laughed in spite of the agony and thought, if you only knew what
I
knew. Once more Jesus came out with that lie, the worst lie he had ever told, “Today you will sit by my side in Paradise”, and it seemed to his thief self that this little glimmer of false hope was worse than any of the crimes
he
had ever committed.

He raised his head, and wasn’t sure whether he was going to spit in disgust or make one last appeal—say yes!—and the effort made his heart burst. Good, said Jesus III to himself, and died.

I’ve got the measure of this now, said Jesus to himself. I bet next time I come back as a rapist. Or as an arsonist. Or as some bloke who hasn’t paid their taxes. I get the idea.

But Jesus IV was a woman. You could have knocked her down with a feather.

She lived a quiet life in the Judea hills. She kept chickens. She married young, and had three children who honoured her and each day made her heart swell with pride. She kept waiting for her life to intersect with Jesus Christ’s—but it never did. She never heard his name mentioned, would never even have known he was out there changing the world if she hadn’t lived through it all already. Every once in a while she thought she should ask about him, find out what was going on. But the name always died in her throat. Best not to know. Better not to draw attention to herself.

All her life she waited to be crucified. She waited for some terrible tragedy to overtake her. Some ironic twist of fate that would set her on the road to Calvary, maybe, something that would propel her into a life of crime. (Because she knew she
would
kill, she would for her children, if she had to save them, if it did them the least good, she
would
.) But she died of the palsy, and it wasn’t really painful as such. On her deathbed she babbled nonsense. “Don’t let them find me and bore nails through my flesh.” Her husband mourned her. She’d been a strange woman, all had said so—always with that hooded expression, always so fearful. But he’d loved her.

Jesus wondered how many times he could endure this merry-go-round before going mad. It wasn’t the unending tedium of it all—now a baker, now a cobbler, a beggar here and there—though that was bad enough. No, it was the fact that every life he led, no matter how undistinguished, no matter how much you’d want to edit it down to a few salient points here and there and move on, stayed in his memories in all their minute details.

So many bodies he’d inhabited, with all their different sins, and all their deaths too, Jesus had died in so many varied ways. And the truth of it was that, for the most part, the deaths weren’t interesting or lurid—they were just more chunks of dull inevitability. Rather than the experiences making Jesus wiser still, they seemed to dilute him rather—as if every fresh scrap of knowledge he inherited was pushing something more valuable out. There were so many conflicting thoughts bubbling away in Jesus’ brain it was hard to discern which belonged to the current Jesus, which to the original, and which ones in between. How many people could he carry around in his head before something snapped?

The answer was simple. Eighty-six.

He didn’t know what the original Jesus could do for him. But he was a purer Jesus, before he’d been tainted by all this adultery and robbery and murder and covetousness of his neighbour’s ass. Before all this banality.

“Help me!” he cried to him. “Jesus, you have to help me.”

“What is your name?” asked Jesus.

“I don’t know anymore!” he cried. “Which name do you want? I can’t remember them all. There’s a whole legion of them inside me!”

And the old Jesus told him he was possessed by evil spirits. And the new Jesus began to protest that it wasn’t quite as simple as that; nothing could be as
simple
as that, this new faith of his would never work if it divided people into the faithful and those possessed by spirits, how very convenient, how
fatuous.
But Jesus commanded the spirits to come forth, and he felt a tearing from within him, and his heart felt lighter and healthier and more singular than he’d known in many centuries. The other selves flew into a herd of swine, who panicked and ran off a nearby handy cliff.

Jesus the eighty-seventh—although he wasn’t that now, what was left? He was Joshua, plain and simple Josh—got down on his knees and began to weep tears of gratitude. He asked if he could join the disciples, and delighted that for once he didn’t know what answer Jesus might give him.

Jesus looked a bit puzzled, and the disciples exchanged glances. “Erm, no, that’s all right,” said Jesus. “Why don’t you just go home, eh?”

And Joshua went home, happier than he’d ever been.

Late that night the voices in his head came back.

“Evil spirits,” smirked Jesus XXIV, who had had a habit of smirking, it had irritated everybody. “We’re not evil spirits, we’re
you
,” said Jesus XLIII.

“No,” he moaned softly. “This was all over and done with.”