And with shocking clarity, I recalled their source. Another Man had spoken those words in His extremity—a prayer, a last cry of agony, by one dying, nailed to a wooden cross on a hill called Golgotha...
With unwonted fellowship, Joe called out suddenly, “Hey, Bub—you care for another drink? On the house? You don’t look so good.”
The old man seemed not to have heard. Eyes tortured, he poured the rejected coins back into his pouch, counting soundlessly. Then, with a sigh like a chill wind through the branches of a bare tree, he flung open the street door and plunged into the night.
“Well, how about that?” Joe growled. “What a kook! Tryin’ to give them foreign coins away one minute, and the next, refusin’ to sell you one! And him with a whole sackful! How many of them things could he have been needin’, now, for his own use?”
I sat silent for a moment, gulping the last of my hot punch. A chill far more penetrating than the icy wind outside made me shiver; I longed for the comforting familiarity of the little flat my husband and I shared.
“How many? Oh, about thirty, I would say, to buy what he needs.” I thought of Biblical verses remembered from childhood: “ I.. repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying: I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent. And they said: What is that to us? See thou to that...: ”
Joe came around the bar, concerned. “What’re you talkin’ about, Mary?”
“ ‘And he cast down the pieces of silver, and... went and hanged himself... !* Even the grave rejected him, Joe. He’s still walking the earth, trying to buy back his soul! Joe, we've just met the Wandering Jew!”
Half in Shadow Page 23
