Apocryphal Tales

by Karel Čapek

  “I too,” Tamar stated devoutly. “And what else did He say, Martha? What did He say to Mary? What did He teach?”

  “I don’t know,” said Martha. “I asked Mary, but you know how scatterbrained she is. ‘I really don’t know,’ was her only answer; ‘I honestly couldn’t tell you a word He said, but it was so incredibly beautiful, Martha, and I’m so enormously happy — ’”

  “Surely that’s worth something, too,” Tamar supposed.

  Whereupon Martha swallowed her tears, snuffled noisily, and said: “Anyway, Tamar, hand me the baby and I’ll change him for you.”

  January 3, 1932

  Lazarus

  And the rumor came to Bethany that the Galilean had been seized and cast into prison.

  When Martha heard this she clasped her hands, and tears burst from her eyes. “You see,” she cried, “it’s what I’ve said all along! Why did He have to go to Jerusalem? Why didn’t He stay here? No one would have known about Him here — He could have gone on peacefully with His carpentry — He could have set up a workshop in our courtyard — ”

  Lazarus was pale, and his eyes glowed with emotion. “That’s a foolish way to talk, Martha,” he said. “He just had to go to Jerusalem. He had to take a stand against those. . . those Pharisees and tax-collectors, He had to tell them the truth to their faces — You women don’t understand these things.”

  “I understand,” Mary said, her quiet voice filled with rapture. “And I can tell you this: I know what will happen. A miracle will happen. He will point His finger, and the prison walls will open — and everyone will recognize Him, fall on their knees before Him, and cry, ‘A miracle’ — ”

  “Don’t hold your breath,” Martha said tersely. “He’s never shown the least concern for Himself. He won’t do a thing for Himself, He won’t help Himself, although — ” she added, her eyes growing wide, “ — although others could help Him. Maybe He’s waiting for them to come to His aid — all those who’ve heard Him speak — all those whom He’s helped — maybe He’s waiting for them to gird themselves up for action and come running — ”

  “That’s what I think,” declared Lazarus. “Never fear, girls, He has all of Judea behind him. They’ll make good and sure that — in fact, I’d like to see it for myself — Martha, pack my things for a trip. I’m going to Jerusalem.”

  Mary stood up. “I’m going too. So I can see the walls of the prison open wide and Him reveal Himself in all His heavenly glory — Martha, it will be simply amazing!”

  Martha wanted to say something, but she swallowed it. “Then go, children,” she said. “Someone needs to look after things here — feed the chickens and goats — I’ll pack your clothes right away and bake you some flatbread for the journey. I’m so glad you’ll be there!”

  When she returned, her face red from the heat of the oven, Lazarus was paler than usual and obviously distressed. “I don’t feel well, Martha,” he muttered. “What’s the weather like outside?”

  “Lovely and warm,” said Martha. “Just right for walking.”

  “Warm here, maybe,” objected Lazarus, “but that cold wind up in Jerusalem never stops blowing.”

  “I’ve packed a warm cloak for you,” Martha pointed out.

  “Warm cloak,” Lazarus grumbled morosely. “You sweat in a cloak, then the cold blows right through you, and that’s all it takes! Feel my forehead — don’t I have a temperature? I wouldn’t want to fall ill on the journey, you know — there’s no relying on Mary — and what use would I be to Him if I got sick?”

  “You don’t have a temperature,” Martha consoled him, thinking: Good heavens, Lazarus has been so strange, ever since that time — since that time when he was raised from the dead —

  “It was a cold wind that got me that time, too, when — when I was so sick,” Lazarus said uneasily; the fact is, he disliked talking about his former death. “You know, Martha dear, one way or another I haven’t been any too well since then. It wouldn’t be very good for me, this trip and all the excitement — But of course I’ll go, just as soon as this shivering stops.”

  “I know you’ll go,” Martha said with a heavy heart. “Someone must hurry to His aid; after all, He — healed you,” she added hesitantly, for it struck her too as indelicate, somehow, to speak of his raising from the dead. “Look, Lazarus, once you’ve freed Him, you can at least ask Him to help you — if perhaps you’re not feeling well — ”

  “That’s true,” sighed Lazarus. “But what if I don’t get that far? What if we arrive too late? You have to consider all the possibilities. And what if there turns out to be some sort of free-for-all in Jerusalem? You don’t know those Roman soldiers, girl. Oh, Lord, if only I were healthy!”

  “Well, you are healthy, Lazarus,” Martha retorted. “You must be healthy, since He healed you!”

  “Healthy!” Lazarus said bitterly. “I’m the one to know if I’m healthy or not. I’m only telling you that, ever since that time things haven’t been easy for me, even for a minute — Not that I’m not extremely grateful to Him for — getting me back on my feet; don’t think that, Martha. But once someone goes through what I did, that — that — ” Lazarus shuddered and covered his face. “Please, Martha, leave me alone now. I need to pull myself together — I only need a moment — it’s bound to pass — ”

  Martha sat down quietly in the courtyard, staring straight ahead with dry, fixed eyes. Her hands were clasped, but she didn’t pray. The black hens drew near to peer at her, one eye cocked; when, contrary to their expectations, she tossed no grain their way, they left to drowse in the midday shade.

  Lazarus crept quietly out from the passageway, deathly pale, his teeth chattering. “I — I can’t, not now, Martha,” he stammered. “I’d like so much to go — perhaps tomorrow — ”

  There was a lump in Martha’s throat. “You’d better go lie down, Lazarus,” she managed to say. “You — you can’t go.”

  “I would go,” Lazarus faltered, “but if you think, Martha dear — Tomorrow perhaps — But don’t leave me home by myself, will you? What would I do here all alone?”

  Martha got up. “Just go lie down,” she said in her customarily gruff voice. “I’ll stay with you.”

  At that moment Mary stepped out into the courtyard, dressed for the journey. “Well, Lazarus, shall we leave?”

  “Lazarus can’t go anywhere,” Martha answered drily. “He isn’t well.”

  “Then I’ll go alone,” sighed Mary. “To see the miracle.”

  Tears trickled slowly from Lazarus’s eyes. “I’d like so much to go with you, Martha — if only I weren’t so afraid . . . of dying again!”

  March 27, 1932

  The Five Loaves

  . . . What have I got against him? I’ll tell you frankly, neighbor — it’s not that I have anything against his teaching. Not at all. I listened to him preach once, and believe me, I came close to becoming one of his followers myself. Why, I went back home and told my cousin the saddle-maker: you really ought to hear him; in his own way, he’s a prophet. He speaks beautifully, no doubt about it; it makes your heart turn right over. I’m telling you, I had tears in my eyes; I’d have willingly closed up my shop then and there and followed him so as to never let him out of my sight. Give away all you have, he said, and follow me. Love your neighbor, help the poor, forgive those who wrong you, things like that. I’m just an ordinary baker, but when I listened to him there was such a strange joy and pain within me, I don’t know how to describe it: such a weight inside that I could have fallen to my knees and wept, yet at the same time I felt so fine and light, as if everything had fallen away from me, all my cares and anger. So I said to my cousin, you dummy, you ought to be ashamed of yourself; all you can talk about is money, who owes you what, and how you have to pay all those tithes and markups and interest; you ought to give everything you have to the poor, leave your wife and children, and follow him — —

  And as for his curing the sick and the possessed, I don’t hold that against him
, either. True, it’s a strange and unnatural power, but still, everybody knows that our surgeons are self-serving bunglers and those Roman ones aren’t any better; they’re good at taking your money, but when you call them to tend the dying, they just shrug their shoulders and say you should have called them sooner. Sooner! My late wife was sick for two years with a hemorrhage; I took her to one doctor after another, you can’t imagine the money it cost, and not a one of them was any help to her. If he’d been going from town to town then, I’d have fallen on my knees before him and said: Lord, heal this woman! And she’d have touched his robe and been healed. I can’t begin to tell you how that poor thing suffered — So that’s what I praise him for, curing the sick. The quacks are all crying out against it, you know; they say it’s fraud and meddling and they want him stopped and what not. But you’ve got all kinds of interests at work here. Anyone who wants to help people and save the world is bound to bump up against somebody else’s interests; you can’t please everyone, it isn’t possible. I say, let him heal folks and maybe even raise the dead, but he shouldn’t have done what he did with those five loaves of bread. I’m telling you as a baker, that was a great injustice to bakers.

  You didn’t hear about that business with the five loaves of bread? I’m surprised at that; all the bakers are absolutely beside themselves over the affair. Well, they say a great multitude followed him to a desert place, and he healed their sick. And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, “This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.” But he said unto them, “They need not depart; give them to eat.” And they say unto him, “We have here but fives loaves, and two fishes.” He said, “Bring them hither to me.” And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass; and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude. And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full. And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

  Admit it, neighbor, no baker’s going to stand for that; how could he? If it gets to be standard practice for somebody or other to feed five thousand people with five loaves and two fishes, then bakers would be put out to pasture, am I right? Forget about those fishes; they grow all by themselves in the water and anyone who wants to can catch them. But a baker has to buy flour and firewood at high prices, he has to have an assistant and pay him wages, he has to maintain a shop, he has to pay taxes and what have you, and in the end he’s glad if he has a few pennies left over to live on, just so he doesn’t have to go out begging. But he, he just looks up to heaven and he’s got enough bread for five or who knows how many thousand people. Flour costs him nothing, he doesn’t have to have firewood hauled from God knows where, no expenses, no work — well, of course he can give people bread for free, can’t he? And he never even thinks about the fact that he’s depriving local bakers of an honest, hard-earned profit! It’s unfair competition, I tell you, and he’s got to be stopped. Let him pay taxes like us if he wants to run a bakery! People are already coming to us and saying, how come you’re asking such an unchristian amount of money for one lousy little loaf? You should give it away for free, like he does, and the good kind, like his bread is said to be: so white, crunchy, and sweet-smelling you can eat yourself to death on it. — — We’ve already had to knock down prices as it is; on my honor, we’re offering baked goods at less than cost just to keep from closing our shops. If things go on this way, it’ll be the end of the bakery business. They say that at some other place he fed four thousand men besides women and children from seven loaves and a few small fishes, but they only took up four baskets of fragments there; it may be that his business isn’t going so well after all, but he’s ruining us bakers for good. And I’m telling you right now, he’s only doing it out of hostility to us bakers. Of course, the fishmongers are crying out against him, too, but they charge outrageous prices for their fish, you know; it’s just not as honest a trade as ours.

  Look here, neighbor: I’ll be an old man before long and I’m all alone in this world; I have neither wife nor child, so there’s not a thing I need. I’ve already told my assistant that he’s stuck with my bakery now. There’s no profit for me in staying here; in truth, I’d rather give away my few measly possessions and follow him and cultivate love for my neighbors and everything else he preaches. But when I see the stand he’s taking against us bakers, I tell myself: Oh, no you don’t! I can see, as a baker, that this is no redemption of the world, but a ready-made disaster for our trade. I’m sorry, but I can’t let him get away with it. It won’t do.

  Naturally, we filed a complaint against him with Annas and with the governor for interfering with trade regulations and for disturbing the peace, but you know how these officials take forever to get anything done. You know me, neighbor: I’m a peaceable man and I don’t go seeking quarrels with anyone. But if he comes to Jerusalem, I’ll stand out in the streets and shout: Crucify him! Crucify him!

  March 28, 1937

  Benchanan

  Annas

  You ask, Benchanan, whether he’s guilty. It’s like this: I didn’t condemn him to death, I merely sent him on to Caiaphas. Let Caiaphas tell you what kind of offense he found him guilty of; I personally have nothing to do with it.

  I’m an old pragmatist, Benchanan, and I’ll speak to you quite frankly. I think that some of the points in his teachings were sound. The man was right about a lot of things, Benchanan, and his intentions were honorable; but his tactics were wrong. That’s why he could never have succeeded. He’d have done better to write his teachings down and publish them in a book. Then people would have read the book and said that it was weak or overstated, that there was nothing new in it and things like that, the way people always talk about books. But after a while, somebody or other would have set out to write another book along the same lines, and after that still others, and eventually some of his ideas, at any rate, would have taken root. Not all of them, not all of his teachings, but then no reasonable person would expect that. It’s enough if he puts across at least one or two of his ideas. That’s how it’s done, my dear Benchanan, and it’s the only way to go about it if we want to reform the world. It has to be done patiently, gently, in moderation. I say it’s a matter of using the right tactics; what good is truth if we don’t know how to put it across?

  That, in a nutshell, was his mistake: that he didn’t have patience. He wanted to save the world in a day, even against its will. And that’s not how things work, Benchanan. He shouldn’t have gone about it in such a rash, straightforward way. Truth must be smuggled in; it has to trickle down piecemeal, a drop here and a drop there, so that people can get accustomed to it gradually. You don’t suddenly say: give everything you have to the poor, and that kind of talk. That’s bad strategy. And he should have been more careful about what he was doing. For instance, the way he took a harness strap to those money-changers in the temple — well, they’re good Jews too, and they have to make a living somehow! I know, money-changing tables don’t belong in a temple, but they’ve been there since time began, so why make such a fuss about it? He should have filed a complaint against them with the Sanhedrin, that’s what. Probably the Sanhedrin would have ordered the tables to be moved a little way from the temple, and everything would have been fine. It all depends on how a thing is done. A man who wants to accomplish something in this world must never lose his head, must keep control of himself, must stay even-tempered and composed at all times. And those mass meetings — you know, Benchanan, no one in authority likes to see that. Or the way he let himself be welcomed when he entered Jerusalem; you can’t imagine the bad blood that caused. He should have strode quickly through on foot, greeting people here, greeting people there — that’s how you do it if you want to have influence. I’ve even heard that he let himself be hosted by a Ro
man tax collector, but I don’t believe it. He surely wouldn’t have done something as ill-advised as that; it’s probably only malicious gossip. And he shouldn’t have worked those miracles of his; there was bound to be opposition to that. Look, you can’t cure everybody, and those he didn’t perform miracles for were furious afterwards. Or that business about the woman taken in adultery — evidently that really did happen, Benchanan, and it was a terrible mistake. To tell the people in court that not even they were without sin — why, at that rate what kind of justice system could there be in this world? I’m telling you, he made one mistake after another. He should only have taught, not done anything; he shouldn’t have taken his own teachings so downright literally; he shouldn’t have tried to put them into practice right away. He went at it badly, my dear Benchanan. Just between the two of us, he may have been right about a lot of things, but his tactics were all wrong. In short, things couldn’t have turned out other than they did.

  Don’t worry your head over it, Benchanan; everything’s in order. He was a just man, but if he wanted to save the world he shouldn’t have gone about it in such a radical way. You’re asking me, then, was he rightfully condemned? That is your question! But I’m telling you that, with tactics like those, he was bound to fail!

  Caiaphas

  Be seated, my dear Benchanan, I am completely at your service. So, you wish to know whether, in my opinion, the man was rightfully crucified. My dear sir, it is a very simple matter. In the first place, it has nothing to do with us. We didn’t condemn him to death, we merely turned him over to the Roman procurator, isn’t that so? Why would we have taken that sort of responsibility upon ourselves? If he was justly condemned, well and good; if an injustice occurred, then it is the fault of the Romans, and some day we may hold them to account on that score. That’s how it is, my dear Benchanan; a matter such as this must be evaluated from a political point of view. I, at least, as high priest, must consider how it could be turned to our advantage politically. Just think about it, my friend: the Romans have rid us of a person who — how should I put it? — who to us, for obvious reasons, was undesirable. And yet the responsibility falls upon them — —