Complete Works of George Moore

by George Moore

  And then this tall, grave, handsome man, whose face reflected a friendly but somewhat formal soul, took Joseph by the arm and walked with him up and down the tessellated pavement, talking in his ear, showing himself so well disposed towards him that the centurion congratulated himself that he had accepted Joseph’s bribe. If I had only known that you were a close friend, Pilate said to Joseph — but if I had known as much it would only have made things more difficult for me. A remarkable man. And now, on thinking it over, it must have been that I was well disposed to him for that reason, for there could have been no other; for what concern of mine is it that you Jews quarrel and would tear each other to pieces for your various beliefs in God and his angels? So Jesus was your friend? Tell me about him; I would know more about him than I could learn from a brief interview with him in the Prætorium, where I took him and talked to him alone. A brief account I pray you give me. And Joseph, who was thinking all the while that the Sabbath was approaching, gave to Pilate some brief account of Jesus in Galilee.

  So you too, Joseph, are susceptible to this belief that the bodies of men are raised out of the earth into heaven? I would ask you if the body is ridded of its worms before it is carried away by angels. But I see that you are pressed for time; the Sabbath approaches; I must not detain you, and yet I would not let you go without telling you that it pleases me to give his body for burial. A body deserves burial that has been possessed by a lofty soul, for how many years, thirty? I would have saved him if it had been possible to do so; but he gave me no chance; his answers were brief and evasive; and he seemed to desire death; seemingly he looked upon his death as necessary for the accomplishment of his mission. Have I divined him right? Joseph answered that Pilate read Jesus’ soul truly, which flattered Pilate and persuaded him into further complaint that if he had not saved Jesus it was because Jesus would not answer him. He seemed to me like a man only conscious of his own thoughts, Pilate said; even while speaking he seemed to rouse hardly at all out of his dream, a delirious dream, if I may so speak, of the world redeemed from the powers of evil and given over to the love of God. This, however, he did say: that any power which I might have over him came to me from above, from his Father which is in heaven, else I could do nothing; and there was bitterness in his voice as he spoke these words, which seemed to suggest that he was of opinion that his Father had gone a little too far in allowing the Jews to send him to me to condemn to death.

  His Father in heaven and himself are one, and yet they differ in this. So he was your friend, Joseph? If I had known it there would have been an additional reason for my trying to save him from the hatred of the Jews; for I hate the Jews, and would willingly leave them to-morrow. But they cried out: you are not Cæsar’s friend; this man would set up a new kingdom and overthrow the Romans; and, as I have already told you, Joseph, I asked Jesus if he claimed to be King of the Jews, but he answered me: you have said it, adding, however, that his kingdom was not of this world. Evasive answers of that kind are worthless when a mob is surging round the Prætorium. A hateful crowd they looked to me; a cruel, rapacious, vindictive crowd, with nothing in their minds but hatred. I suspect they hated him for religious reasons. You Jews are — forgive me, Joseph, you are an exception among your people — a bitter, intolerant race. You would not allow me to bring the Roman eagles to Jerusalem, for you cannot look upon graven things. All the arts you have abolished, and your love of God resolves itself into hatred of men; so it seems to me. It would have pleased me very well indeed to have thwarted the Jews in their desire for this man’s life, but I was threatened by a revolt, and the soldiers at my command are but auxiliaries, and not in sufficient numbers to quell a substantial riot. I will tell you more: if the legion that I was promised had arrived from Cæsarea the lust of the Jews for the blood of those that disagree with them would not have been satisfied. I went so far as to send messengers to inquire for the legion. But the man is dead now, and further talking will not raise him into life again. You have come to ask me for his body, and you would bury it in your own tomb. It is like you, Joseph, to wish to honour your dead friend. Methinks you are more Roman than Jew. Say not so in the hearing of my countrymen, Joseph replied, or I may meet my death for your good opinion.

  The Sabbath is now approaching, and you’ll forgive me if I indulge in no further words of thanks, Pilate. I may not delay, lest the hour should come upon me after which no work can be done. Not that I hold with such strict observances. A good work done upon the Sabbath must be viewed more favourably by God than a bad work done on another day of the week. But I would not have it said that I violated the Sabbath to bury Jesus. As you will, my good Joseph, Pilate said, and stood looking after Joseph and the centurion, who, as they drew near to the gate of the city, remembered that a sheet would be wanted to wrap the body in. Joseph answered the centurion that there was no time for delay, but the centurion replied: in yon shop sheets are sold. Moreover, you will want a lantern, Sir, for the lifting of the body from the cross will take some time, and the carrying of it to the tomb will be a slow journey for you though you get help, and the day will be gone when you arrive. You had better buy a lantern, Sir. Joseph did as he was bidden, and they hurried on to Golgotha.

  Nothing has been done in my absence? the centurion asked the soldiers, who answered: nothing, Sir; and none has been here but these women, whom we did not drive away, but told that you were gone with one Joseph of Arimathea to get an order from Pilate for the body. That was well, the centurion answered. And now do you loose the cords that bind the hands, and get the dead man down. Which was easy to accomplish, the feet of the crucified being no more than a few inches from the ground; and while this was being done Joseph told the centurion that the women were the sisters of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from the dead; a story that set the Roman soldiers laughing. Can a man be raised from the dead? they asked; and if this man could do such a thing how is it that he did not raise himself out of death into life? To which neither Joseph nor the two women made any answer, but stood, their eyes fixed on their thoughts, asking themselves how they were to carry Jesus to the sepulchre, distant about a mile and a half. And it not seeming to them that they could carry the body, the centurion offered Joseph the help of one of his soldiers, which they would have accepted, but at that moment an ox-cart was perceived hastening home in the dusk. Joseph, going after the carrier, offered him money if he would bring the body of one of the crucified to the sepulchre in Mount Scropas for him. To which the carrier consented, though he was not certain that the job might not prevent him from getting home before the Sabbath began. But he would see what could be done.

  Jesus was laid on the ox-cart, and Mary, Martha and Joseph following it reached Mount Scropas, in which was the tomb, before sunset. As I told thee with half-an-hour for thee to get home before the Sabbath, Joseph said to the carrier, his eyes fixed on the descending sun. Now take this man by the feet and I’ll take him by the head. But will you not light the lantern, Sir? the carrier said; for though there be light on the hillside, it will be night in the tomb, and we shall be jostling our heads against the stone and perhaps falling over the dead man.... I have steel and tinder. Wherefrom the lantern was lit and given to Martha, who lighted them into the tomb, Joseph and the carrier bearing the body, with Mary following.

  Jesus was laid on the couch beneath the arch, and when Mary and Martha had drawn the sheet over his face Joseph turned to the women, saying: now do you go hence to Bethany and prepare spices and cloths for the embalmment, and come hither with them in the early morning the day after the Sabbath. The carrier, who was standing by waiting for his wage, received it thankfully. Now, Master, if you want another shoulder to help with that sealing stone, I can give it you. But Joseph, looking at the stone, said it would offer no trouble to him, for he believed in his strength to do it, though the carrier said: it looks as if two men, or more like three, would be needed. But it is as you like, Master. On this he went to his oxen, thinking of the Sabbath, and whether Joseph had forg
otten how near it was to them. He hasn’t blown out his lantern yet. My word, he be going back into the tomb, the carrier said; maybe he’s forgotten something, or maybe to have a last look at his friend. He talks like one in a dream, or one that hadn’t half recovered his wits.

  And it was just in the mood which the carrier divined that Joseph entered the tomb: life had been coming and going like a dream ever since he met the masons; and asking himself if he were truly awake and in his seven senses, he returned to bid Jesus a last farewell, though he would not have been astonished if he sought him in vain through the darkness filled with the dust of freshly cut stones and the smell thereof. But Jesus was where they had laid him; and Joseph sate himself by the dead Master’s side, so that he might meditate and come to see better into the meanings of things, for all meaning seemed to have gone out of life for him since he had come up from Jericho. The flickering shadows and lights distracted his meditation, and set him thinking of the masons and their pride in their work; he looked round the sepulchre and perceived it to be a small chamber with a couch at the farther end.... Martha and Mary have gone, he said to himself, and he remembered he had bidden them go hence to prepare spices, and to return after the Sabbath. Which they will do as soon as the Sabbath is over, he repeated to himself, as if to convince himself that he was not dreaming.... God did not save him in the end as he expected he would, he continued: he’d have done better to have given Pilate answers whereby Pilate would have been able to save him from the cross. Pilate was anxious to save him, but, as Nicodemus said, Jesus had come to think that it had been decreed in heaven that his blood must be spilt, so that he might rise again, as it were, out of his own blood, to return in a chariot with his Father in three days.... But will he return to inhabit again this beautiful mould? Joseph asked, and striving against the doubt that the sight of the dead put into his mind, he left the tomb with the intention of rolling the stone into the door. Better not to see him than to doubt him, he said. But who will, he asked himself, roll away the stone for Martha and Mary when they come with spices and fine linen for the embalming? His mind was divided whether he should close the tomb and go his way, or watch through the Sabbath, and while seeking to come upon a resolve he was overcome by desire to see his dead friend once more, and he entered the tomb, holding high the lantern so that he might better see him. But as he approached the couch on which the body lay he stopped, and the colour went out of his face; he trembled all over; for the sheet with which Martha and Mary covered over the face had fallen away, and a long tress of hair had dropped across the cheek. He must have moved, or angels must have moved him, and, uncertain whether Jesus was alive or dead, Joseph remembered Lazarus, and stood watching, cold and frightened, waiting for some movement.

  He is not dead, he is not dead, he cried, and his joy died, for on the instant Jesus passed again into the darkness of swoon. Joseph had no water to bathe his forehead with, nor even a drop to wet his lips with. There is none nearer than my house, he said. I shall have to carry him thither. But if a wayfarer meets us the news that a man newly risen from the tomb was seen on the hillside with another will soon reach Jerusalem; and the Pharisees will send soldiers.... The tomb will be violated; the houses in the neighbourhood will be searched. Why then did he awaken only to be taken again? Jesus lay as still as the dead, and hope came again to Joseph. On a Sabbath evening, he said, I shall be able to carry him to my house secretly. The distance is about half-a-mile. But to carry a swooning man half-a-mile up a crooked and steep path among rocks will take all my strength.

  He took cognisance of his thews and sinews, and feeling them to be strong and like iron, he said: I can do it, and fell to thinking of his servants loitering in the passages, talking as they ascended the stairs, stopping half-way and talking again, and getting to bed slowly, more slowly than ever on this night, the night of all others that he wished them sound asleep in their beds. Half-a-mile up a zigzagging path I shall have to carry him; he may die in my arms; and he entertained the thought for a moment that he might go for his servants, who would bring with them oil and wine; but dismissing the thought as unwise, he left the tomb to see if the darkness were thick enough to shelter himself and his burden.

  But Jesus might pass away in his swoon. If he had some water to give him. But he had none, and he sat by the couch waiting for Jesus to open his eyes. At last he opened them.

  The twilight had vanished and the stars were coming out, and Joseph said to himself: there will be no moon, only a soft starlight, and he stood gazing at the desert showing through a great tide of blue shadow, the shape of the hills emerging, like the hulls of great ships afloat in a shadowy sea. A dark, close, dusty night, he said, and moonless, deserted by every man and woman; a Sabbath night. On none other would it be possible. But thinking that some hours would have to pass before he dared to enter his gates with Jesus on his shoulder, he seated himself on the great stone. Though Jesus were to die for lack of succour he must wait till his servants were in bed asleep. And then? The stone on which he was sitting must be rolled into the entrance of the tomb before leaving. He had told the carrier that he would have no trouble with it, and to discover that he had not boasted he slid down the rock, and, putting his shoulder to it, found he could move it, for the ground was aslant, and if he were to remove some rubble the stone would itself roll into the entrance of the tomb. But he hadn’t known this when he refused the carrier’s help. Then why?... To pass away the time he fell to thinking that he had refused the carrier’s aid because of some thought of which he wasn’t very conscious at the time; that he had been appointed watcher, and that his watch extended through the night, and through the next day and night, until Mary and Martha came with spices and linen cloths.

  The cycle of his thoughts was brought to a close and with a sudden jerk by some memory of his maybe dying friend; and in his grief he found no better solace than to gaze at the stars, now thickly sown in the sky, and to attempt to decipher their conjunctions and oppositions, trying to pick out a prophecy in heaven of what was happening on earth.

  His star-gazing was interrupted suddenly by a bark. A jackal, he said. Other jackals answered the first bark; the hillside seemed to be filled with them; but, however numerous, he could scare them away; a wandering hyena scenting a dead body would be more dangerous, for he was weaponless. But it was seldom that one ventured into the environs of the city; and he listened to the jackals, and they kept him awake till something in the air told him the hour had come for him to go into the tomb and carry Jesus out of it ... if he were not dead. He slid down from the rock again, and no sooner did he reach the ground than he remembered having left Galilee to keep his promise to his father; but, despite his obedience to his father’s will, had not escaped his fate. In vain he avoided the Temple and refused to enter the house of Simon the Leper.... If he were to take Jesus to his house and hide him he would become a party to Jesus’ crime, and were Jesus discovered in his house the angry Pharisees would demand their death from Pilate. If he would escape the doom of the cross he must roll the stone up into the entrance of the sepulchre.... A dying man perceives no difference between a sepulchre and a dwelling-house. He would be dead before morning; before the Sabbath was done for certain; and Mary and Martha would begin the embalmment on Sunday. He would be dead certainly on Sunday morning, and dead men tell no tales, so they say. But do they say truly? The dead are voiceless, but they speak, and are closer to us than the living; and for ever the spectre of that man would be by him, making frightful every hour of his life. Yet by closing up the sepulchre and leaving Jesus to die in it he would be serving him better than by carrying him to his house and bringing him back to life. To what life was he bringing him? He could not be kept hidden for long; he could not remain in Jerusalem, and whither Jesus went Joseph would follow, and his bond to his father would be broken then in spirit as well as in fact. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead and for a long time his mind seemed like a broken thing and the pieces scattered; and as much exhausted as if h
e had carried Jesus a mile on his shoulders, he stooped forward and entered the tomb, without certain knowledge whether he was going to kiss Jesus and close the tomb upon him or carry him to his house about a half-an-hour distant.

  As he drew the cere-cloths from the body, a vision of his house rose up in his mind — a large two-storeyed house with a domed roof, situated on a large vineyard on the eastern slopes of the Mount of Olives, screened from the highway by hedges of carob, olive garths and cedars. And this house seemed to Joseph as if designed by Providence for the concealment of Jesus. The only way, he muttered, will be to lift him upon my shoulders, getting the weight as far as I can from off my arms. If he could walk a little supported on my arm. He questioned Jesus, but Jesus could not answer him; and there seemed to be no other way but to carry him in his arms out of the tomb, place him on the rock, and from thence hoist him on to his shoulders.

  Jesus was carried more easily than he thought for, as easily carried as a child for the first hundred yards, nor did he weigh much heavier for the next, but before three hundred yards were over Joseph began to look round for a rock against which he might rest his burden.

  One of the hardships of this journey was that howsoever he held Jesus he seemed to cause him great pain, and he guessed by the feel that the body was wounded in many places; but the stars did not show sufficient light for him to see where not to grasp it, and he sat in the pathway, resting Jesus across his knees, thinking of a large rock within sight of his own gates and how he would lean Jesus against it, if he managed to carry him so far. He stopped at sight of something, something seemed to slink through the pale, diffused shadows in and out of the rocks up the hillside, and Joseph thought of a midnight wolf. The wolves did not venture as near the city, but — Whatever Joseph saw with his eyes, or fancied he saw, did not appear again, and he picked up his load, thinking of the hopeless struggle it would be between him and a grey wolf burdened as he was. He could not do else than leave Jesus to be eaten, and his fear of wolf and hyena so exhausted him that he nearly toppled at the next halt. A fall would be fatal to Jesus, and Joseph asked himself how he would lift Jesus on to his shoulder again. He did not think that he could manage it, but he did, and staggered to the gates; but no sooner had he laid his burden down than he remembered that he could not ascend the stairs without noise. The gardener’s cottage is empty; I will carry him thither. The very place, Joseph said, as he paused for breath by the gate-post. I must send away the two men-servants, he continued, one to Galilee and the other to Jericho. The truth cannot be kept from Esora. I need her help: I can depend upon her to cure Jesus of his wounds and keep the young girl in the house, forbidding her the garden while Jesus is in the cottage. The danger of dismissal would be too great, she would carry the story or part of it to Jerusalem, it would spread like oil, and in a few days, in a few weeks certainly, the Pharisees would be sending their agents to search the house. With Jesus hoisted on to his shoulder he followed the path through the trees round the shelving lawn and crossed the terrace at the bottom of the garden. He had then to follow a twisting path through a little wood, and he feared to bump Jesus against the trees. The path led down into a dell, and he could hardly bear up so steep was the ascent; his breath and strength were gone when he came to the cottage door.