Remember Why You Fear Me (58 page)

“Right from birth,” said Pilate, “I knew this day would come. I knew I had to get this right. I invented myself as someone cruel and brutal. Someone who would be put in a position to execute you—just so, when the time came, I could save you. All those people I’ve convicted already, I had them killed just so I could get to you. Do you see? They died so you might live.”

“You cannot save me,” said Jesus. “That isn’t what you’re
for.”

“And maybe I don’t like the role I’ve been given in this stupid story!” said Pilate, losing his temper at last. And straight away he began to beg. “Look, please,” he said. “
Please.
What do I have to do to convince you to carry on living? What can I give you? Wealth? Women? Anything!”

“Get thee behind me,” said Jesus softly.

And Pontius Pilate picked up the dagger, took Jesus by the hair, held the blade hard against his throat.

“And if I kill you now,” he said, breathing heavily, and he knew he was panicking, this wasn’t what he’d planned. “What then? I deny you your little stunt with the cross.”

“You won’t kill me, Pilate,” said Jesus.

“You have no idea what I have been through. What
we
have been through. I’ll do anything to stop it.”

“You won’t kill me because you’re a coward.”

And Pilate knew it was true. He had two sons, both of them scared him. The eldest boy was very nearly a man now, and Pilate didn’t trust him at all. He ate too much and his mother spoiled him and Pilate suspected he tortured animals. The youngest would, at dinner, just look at Pilate without saying a word. Staring. Pilate would try to laugh it off, but he wanted to scream at him, what? What are you accusing me of? And he thought desperately, are you in there, Jesus, is that what this is? Is my son some future Jesus, some future me, come here to stare me down? Pilate’s own wife would lie in bed, utterly passive as he rode her, she’d never make a sound as if deliberately withholding any sign of pleasure, and afterwards she’d just turn away from him and say, “I don’t know what it is, but something’s missing.” She was probably a Jesus too, he was sure of it. And he hated her, he hated them all, but still he played the happy husband, the happy father, because he was scared of what they might tell him if he stopped.

Pilate let go of Jesus’ hair. He’d been born into a coward’s body.

“I’ll stop you some time,” he said. “Not this lifetime then. All right. But sooner or later I’ll stop you.”

Jesus said nothing to that. And then
smiled.
Pilate stepped back, as if he’d been slapped. He ordered the guard back in. “Take this man away,” he said. “Let the Jews do what they want with him. I wash my hands of the whole thing.”

It was a Thursday, so that night his wife lay waiting for him, naked, bored. Ready to be entered with all the passion of a revolving door. “Not tonight,” said Pilate. “I have a headache.” It was the first time he’d surprised her in years.

The 1946th Jesus didn’t live long. He was one of the first born that Herod had put to death at the nativity in his attempt to kill the Messiah. The irony wasn’t lost on the child, but he didn’t really mind. “Thank Christ, at least this one didn’t take long,” thought the baby, as the sword was driven through his little body.

He got close to the crucifixion many times. For a while he was Matthew, and as he watched his Jesus self he decided to chronicle the whole thing. As if only to make some sense of it. When, four hundred or so lives later, he was born as Mark, he decided to write the whole thing again, but this time from a different angle. By the time he was John he thought it might be rather fun to put another spin on it all, and deliberately changed the order the disciples were picked, and shuffled the events of the story around a bit. And as Luke he could barely conceal his yawns as he scribbled out yet another gospel. Watching the feeding of the five thousand yet
again,
having to hear the same old same old about camels passing through eyes of needles. “Sorry, Luke,” said Jesus sarcastically, “are we keeping you up? These miracles of mine not interesting enough?” “No, no,” Luke would say, “they’re absolutely
riveting
, really,” and he’d draft out the latest triumph, and roll his eyes when he was sure Jesus wasn’t looking.

But he didn’t feel it was until he was born as Judas that he could really make a difference.

“I have a mission for you,” said Jesus. “It is highly secret, and none of the other apostles must know of it. Everything rests upon its success. Do you understand me, Judas? Everything.”

“I understand,” said Judas.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“No,” said Judas, “I’m not afraid.”

“I need you to betray me,” said Jesus. “I am going to be crucified, and I need someone to deliver me into the hands of the executioners. Without that sacrifice, man’s sins cannot be purged. And through the spilling of my blood they may be given eternal life. Don’t be afraid.”

“No, really,” said Judas, “I’m not.”

“You should know what this will mean to you,” said Jesus. “You will be the most hated of men. In this life, of course, but worse than that. Throughout all time. Poets will depict you suffering in the deepest circle of Hell, artists will paint you as the ultimate representation of evil. And your very name, Judas, will be forever more a byword for treason and apostasy. In a way, your sacrifice will be worse than mine. But it is necessary. Please, please don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not,” said Judas patiently, “afraid.”

“And worse still,” went on Jesus, and Judas sighed, “because you have to know, don’t you? You have to know. Your treachery will damn the Jews as well. You’ll symbolize our entire race, and it will be persecuted forever more. Because of you there will be the pogroms, because of you the concentration camps. Are you afraid yet?”

“I think I might be afraid,” said Judas, “if I knew what a concentration camp was. But, no, I’m not afraid.”

“Good.”

“But principally because I’m not going to do it.”

“What?” said Jesus. He looked genuinely flabbergasted. In all his many incarnations, Judas didn’t think Jesus had ever looked so flabbergasted before.

“I’m not a coward,” said Judas. “Do you hear me? You called me a coward once. But not this time.”

“I’ve never called you a coward.”

“Not as me. As Pontius Pilate.”

“I’ve never even met Pontius Pilate.”

Judas sighed. “Well, you will, when you’re betrayed to him.”

Jesus frowned in thought. “I knew I should have waited for James the Less,” he said finally. “Things would be going much more smoothly. You can’t stop me, Judas,” he went on as he saw his old friend produce the knife. “You could kill me, of course, right here and now. It’ll change very little. I’ll still have been the Messiah, and I’ll still have been betrayed, and I’ll still die saving the world. You’ll go down in history as a traitor anyway, the sort of traitor who murders by stealth, in dark alleyways at night.”

Judas glared at him.

“You see,” Jesus said, “at the end of the day. I am not afraid either.”

Judas hesitated. Then muttered, “The hell with you then.” And he walked out of Jesus’ life.

And so the story goes. Jesus then called his apostle James out of the shadows. The other James, the one we call James the Treacherous, James who was Satan’s Own. And after Jesus was crucified, the very word James became forever more a byword for treason and apostasy.

And then, at long last. After so many lives had been lived and wasted and forgotten, he was born as her. The one he couldn’t forget. The woman he had loved so clumsily on the floor of his carpentry shop.

It took Jesus a long time to realize he really was her. He expected so little from the bodies he inhabited now, he lived them as far as he could with his eyes closed. She wasn’t, after all, an especially remarkable woman, she had no notable talents, no great beauty. And she was twenty-two and already married before Jesus looked in the mirror one day and saw that it was her, unarguably
her.
It may have been the way she’d started flicking that thick black hair of hers.

Straight away she set off to find her carpenter. She couldn’t quite remember where he’d be. There were a lot of carpentry shops out there, and she hadn’t visited his in a long time—several hundred thousand years or so. But she was patient. She scoured the whole town, poking her head around the doors, studying every face to see whether it was the man she’d loved. And when she’d exhausted the town, she began to search further afield. She had to be careful; her husband was a jealous man, and she rarely had time to check more than one or two shops before it was time to turn back home again.

But one day she found it. She recognized it immediately, how could she have forgotten it? And she rushed into the shop, her heart already bursting with passion. He was there, his manner surly and unwelcoming. She’d never realized before how ugly he was, having never seen his body through these eyes. But it didn’t matter, all that mattered was that she had at last found her life’s purpose.

She made up some excuse about wanting a present for her husband, but then remembered it was all such nonsense, she knew full well no such present would ever be made or delivered. So she kissed him, and made love to him. He didn’t know how to do it, she had to show him exactly. But she knew he’d improve with practice.

“What’s your name?” he’d ask her. And she wouldn’t tell him. The truth is, when she was with him, she could no longer remember. At home with her husband, in the drudgery that was her
real
life, she knew her name, she knew her whole family history, she knew what she’d called their pet dog when she’d been a little girl. But with this other Jesus, she found the rush of all those memories and past lives confused her, and quite wiped out her identity. And that was good. She had a feeling she didn’t much like herself anyway. And when they made love it was on a cloud of beautiful guiltless ignorance.

He taught her carpentry for fun. And she pretended she was learning from him, that she hadn’t known for herself how to shape wood for countless centuries already. She liked the way it made him feel proud, that he believed in some way he was making an impression on her life.

And of course, he was. He was.

One day in the shop she idly made herself a wooden crucifix. It was only a little thing, no bigger than her palm.

“What on earth did you make that for?” he asked.

“I’ve no idea,” she replied, and hadn’t.

But from that day on, she found that whenever she worked a piece of wood, it always ended up as a crucifix. Sometimes a little medallion, to be threaded through a necklace chain. Sometimes just a miniature to be hung on the wall. Planed smooth and pretty. And, occasionally, if she were really daydreaming, she’d carve a little figure to the cross, with little knobs of wood for the nails.

The carpenter didn’t want to criticize her, he loved her too much. But even so, he couldn’t help but remark upon the peculiar choice of her handiwork. “It’s sick,” he told her bluntly.

She told him that she wouldn’t do any more carpentry. She’d watch him instead—she’d like that. And they recovered their good humour: she’d laugh as she watched him labour so delicately over a chair or table, and then, when they both agreed he’d earned a reward, they’d make love. But whilst he dozed, she would get up. Go to the workshop. And start work upon the crosses once more. She couldn’t help it, her hands would be itching, literally itching, for her to make them. Then she’d steal them home. She kept one wall decoration under her pillow, another under the mattress. The pendant hung layers beneath her clothes, and when she stripped for sex she’d take care to hide it before the carpenter or her husband could see.

One day she could stand it no longer. She was running out of places to hide all her crosses, it frightened her. She showed them to her husband, and told them about her adultery. “I love him,” she said. “But it can’t go on. He makes me think of death.”

“Don’t you love me?” he asked, and she was surprised how plaintive he sounded. “Why did you marry me if you didn’t love me?”

“I had my eyes closed,” she said simply. She then gave him the address of the carpenter, and he left in a fury. She knew how the story went, that she’d never see him again.

They executed her ugly little carpenter, of course. They put the word ‘murderer’ above his head as if that summed him up. All the people at Calvary were there to see the death of Jesus, King of the Jews. Except her. She hoped that her lover would see her as he died, would give her a look, anything—but he didn’t. All that time she watched him on the cross she couldn’t remember her name, and only when he died did it come back to her. It wasn’t as pretty as she’d imagined.

And then, soon after that, after a very few million more lifetimes, Jesus was born as Jesus once more.

There were two specific things he recognized. The first was the face of Mary—after so many mothers, she was still the one he’d been waiting for. And the second was—everything else. All those past lives he’d been through, which he’d successfully buried away or deliberately misremembered. Each one came back to him in perfect clarity, every little detail, the ugliness and the beauty and the deep ocean of bland grey in between.

What a world, he thought to himself.

From that moment his life continued exactly as he knew it would. He’d already lived it, witnessed it from every conceivable angle, written four gospels about it. He sometimes felt he was acting out a dream, that it was just a question of remembering all his lines and he’d get through all right. On the road to Calvary a man stops to help him as he staggers under the cross, and that’s him. A Roman soldier forces the man back into the crowd, and that’s him too. They nail him to the cross, and he’s those that hold him down, and the ones weeping to see his agony, the ones bent forward as if hypnotized by the gushing of all that blood. He is sick of the sight of himself.

And this time he does not scream.

He knows the men dying on the cross next to him, of course. He offers words of comfort to the murderer, and he knows they do him some little good. He’d offer them to the thief as well, but knows that the thief wouldn’t want them. They all die one by one. The sky goes black. The wind stops.