by Colm Toibin
Marcus stood up and joined a small group at another table and then disappeared as I sat alone, aware that I was being watched now by the figure in the doorway, who seemed to me too young, too innocuous-looking, innocent almost, a man whose wispy beard seemed to have grown only recently to cover a thin jaw and a weak chin. He looked like someone who could do no harm except maybe with his eyes, which had a way of fixing on something or someone, a way of taking in a complete scene as though he would need not to forget it, and then shifting his gaze to a scene close to it. But it was always an animal gaze, there was no intelligence apparent in his face, not even a coldness, just something distant, passive, brutish. For a moment I caught his eye but I turned away and for some time looked only on the figure of Lazarus.
And Lazarus, it was clear to me, was dying. If he had come back to life it was merely to say a last farewell to it. He recognized none of us, barely appeared able to lift the glass of water to his lips as he was handed small pieces of soaked bread by his sisters. His roots seemed to have spread downwards, and he saw his sisters as you would see someone or other at a market or in a crowd. There was something supremely alone about him, and if indeed he had been dead for four days and come alive again, he was in possession of a knowledge that seemed to me to have unnerved him; he had tasted something or seen or heard something which had filled him with the purest pain, which had in some grim and unspeakable way frightened him beyond belief. It was knowledge he could not share, perhaps because there were no words for it. How could there be words for it? As I watched him I knew that whatever it was had bewildered him, whatever knowledge he had come to possess, whatever he had seen or heard, he carried it with him in the depths of his soul as the body carries its own dark share of blood and sinew.
And then the crowd came and the only time I had seen anything like it was that year when there was a shortage of bread and sometimes a consignment of bread would come but it would never be enough and this meant that people had to crash through the crowd, and the crowd had to surge forward like a solid mass. I knew already that the crowd I had seen in the street had not come for the wedding. I knew for whom these people had come, and when he appeared he frightened me more than any of Marcus’s words had frightened me.
My son was wearing rich clothes and he was moving as though the clothes belonged to him as of right. His tunic was made of a material I had never seen before and its colour, a blue that was close to purple, I had never once seen on a man. And he seemed to have grown, but it was merely an illusion brought about by the way he was treated by those around him, those who followed him, those who had come with him, none of whom was dressed as he was or had a glow as he did. It took a while before he crossed the room but yet he spoke to no one and did not seem to stop at any time.
When I rose to embrace him, he appeared unfamiliar, oddly formal and grand, and it struck me that I should speak now, speak in whispers before we were joined by others. I held him to me.
‘You are in great danger,’ I whispered. ‘You are being watched. When I leave the table you must wait for some minutes and then follow me and you must tell no one and we must leave here, be away from here within the next hour. Wait until the bride and bridegroom come and then I will leave as if to refresh myself and that will be the signal. You must follow me. You must tell no one that you are going. You must leave alone.’
Even before I had finished speaking, he had moved away from me.
‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ he asked, and then again louder so that it was heard all around. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’
‘I am your mother,’ I said. But by this time he had begun to talk to others, high-flown talk and riddles, using strange proud terms to describe himself and his task in the world. I heard him saying – I heard it then and I noticed how heads bowed all around when he said it – I heard him saying that he was the Son of God.
As he sat down I wondered if he was pondering what I had whispered to him, if once the bride and bridegroom appeared I should make a move and then wait for him, but slowly, as we waited, and more and more people came to touch him, and as news spread of the numbers who were outside, I realized that he had not even heard me. He heard no one in the excitement of that time. And when the bride and bridegroom came and the cheering began, I had to work out what I should do. I decided that I would stay with him now and I would seek out another chance; maybe when night fell or in the early morning there might be a time that he would be alone and open to warnings. And then it struck me as I looked at him again how ignorant and foolish and meek and ill-informed I would seem warning him as if I knew more than he did. I wished just then that Marcus had not gone, but as I glanced over towards the entrance I could see why he had – the man, the strangler, was standing there but now he had two or three men with him, men stronger-looking than he was, and he was pointing to figures in the crowd. In that second he caught my eye again and I became even more frightened than when I heard the words about the Son of God: I understood that I had not missed my chance to take my son away from here, I understood that I never had such a chance in the first place and that all of us were doomed.
I did not eat much and I do not remember the food. Although my son and I sat beside each other for more than two hours, we did not speak. It seems odd now, but there was nothing strange about our silence. So great was the heightened atmosphere and the sense of growing hysteria, with shouting coming from outside, that mere speech between two people would have been like crumbs on the floor. In the same way as Lazarus had a glow of death about him, almost like a garb that covered every aspect of his being and that no one could penetrate, so too with my son there was a sense of the fluster of life, the bright sky on a windy day, or the trees when they were filled with ripe, unharvested fruit, a sense of an unthinking energy, like bounty. He was so far from the child I remembered or the young boy who seemed happiest in the morning when I came to him and spoke to him as the day began. He was beautiful then and delicate and awash with needs. There was nothing delicate about him now, he was all displayed manliness, utterly confident and radiant, yes, radiant like light is radiant, so that there was nothing we could have spoken of then in those hours, it would have been like speaking to the stars or the full moon.
At some point I noticed that more people had gained entrance to the feast and that all of the attention seemed to be focused on our table rather than on the table where the bride and bridegroom sat. I noticed Martha and Mary leading Lazarus out, linking him, almost holding him, and I noticed the strangler still there, but I was careful now not to catch his eye. And then someone began to shout that the wine had run out and a number of them approached our table; they were the new people who had come and they had about them a sort of ragged excitement, a look on their faces that was trusting and imploring, and a ring in their voices now that was mildly hysterical. More of them began to shout that there was no wine left, some of them even focusing their attention on me, as though I could do something about it. I outstared them and when they shouted louder I pretended that I did not hear them. I may have sipped some wine but it was a matter of indifference to me whether there was any left or not. I wondered indeed if some of the men standing in front of our table had not had enough wine. But my son stood up and spoke to those around him, asking that six stone containers full of water be brought to him. What was strange then was how quickly those containers were carried into the room. I do not know whether each one contained water or wine, certainly the first one contained water, but in all the shouting and confusion no one knew what had happened until they began to shout that he had changed the water into wine. They begged for the bridegroom and the bride’s father to come and sample the new wine as one of them began to proclaim how strange and unusual it was for the host to have kept the good wine until last. And then a vast cheering went up and everyone at the feast began to applaud.
No one noticed, however, that I did not cheer. But in the noise around us I was being included somehow as if my presence ha
d helped to change water into wine. Once it had died down and most people had gone back to their places, I decided that I would speak one more time. I said again what I had said before but I tried to put a great urgency into my words. ‘You are in great danger,’ I began but I saw immediately that it was no use, and without thinking I stood up and, as though my departure were casual and I would soon return, I left the feast and went back to Miriam’s house. I took my belongings and made my way back to Nazareth.
And I thought then that that was the worst part, because when I walked to where I would find the convoy coming back home, there was no convoy waiting. There was no one to ask, and there was no shelter. It was the only place I knew and I waited although the sun was hot. After a while I found shade under a small thin tree and waited longer, but the shade was no use when the rain came. The sky had been so blue, the day so hot; the change now was sudden and total. The rain beat down, and the wind blew. There was nowhere you could go to avoid it. I did what I could. I covered up and huddled under the tree. I waited and others slowly began to gather too, even though the rain persisted and there was thunder. They said that there would be a convoy, and that there was no other place to wait. I stayed there, soaked by rain, because I had no choice. I knew that I had some dry clothes in my bag and hoped that I could change into them when the rain stopped. I would have to wait through the night. There was a man selling food so I did not go hungry. Gradually, it became calm and I changed my clothes and I must have slept for a while and woke then to sounds, to the sounds of animals, and other travellers’ voices, and we set out then in the hour before dawn. I did not know what I would do when I reached home, but it seemed to me then as we set out that I did not have a choice. But it was always there, it was there from the moment I stood up from the table – that I could turn back.
Sometimes, as we were moving, I imagined turning, asking them to stop, and waiting, waiting for the next convoy that would come and lead me back from where I had fled. For what? To do what? Maybe to be there so I could see what others were seeing. Maybe to stay close if they would let me stay close. To ask nothing. To watch. To know. I did not have words for it then. But I let it come to me even as we set out. We had been travelling for some time when I knew that I would have to make a decision. At one of the stops I saw a convoy coming in the distance which could have led me back and as I watched them approach I decided that I would not speak to them. I would complete the journey I had begun towards home.
I thought that it would be quiet when I returned, and that I would remain undisturbed. As much as I could, I put out of my mind what I had seen and heard. I spent my days easily, I prayed in the morning as I had always done, I went out once a day to draw water and feed the animals and tend the garden and the trees, and went further every few days to make sure that I had whatever kindling and firewood were necessary. But I did not need much. When it was bright I sat alone in the shadowy spaces of the house. I did not respond to any callers. I did not respond even when three of the Elders from the Synagogue came and called my name several times, banging loudly on the door. And when it was dark I lay down on the bed and sometimes I slept. Gradually, despite my solitude, I came to realize that the house was marked and I was noticed and watched as I tended the goats or fed the chickens. When I went to get water, people at the well stepped aside as I approached, allowed me through with my water-carrier and remained silent until I had turned towards home. When I slipped into the Synagogue, women moved aside for me but were careful not to sit close to me. But a few women spoke to me, some news came to me. It was a strange period during which I tried not to think, or imagine, or dream, or even remember, when the thoughts that came arrived unbidden and were to do with time – time that turns a baby who is so defenceless into a small boy, with a boy’s fears, insecurities and petty cruelties, and then creates a young man, someone with his own words and thoughts and secret feelings.
And then time created the man who sat beside me at the wedding feast of Cana, the man not heeding me, hearing no one, a man filled with power, a power that seemed to have no memory of years before, when he needed my breast for milk, my hand to help steady him as he learned to walk, or my voice to soothe him to sleep.
And what was strange about the power he exuded was that it made me love him and seek to protect him even more than I did when he had no power. It was not that I saw through it or did not believe it. It was not that I saw him still as a child. No, I saw a power fixed and truly itself, formed. I saw something that seemed to have no history and to have come from nowhere, and I sought in my dreams and in my waking time to protect it and I felt an abiding love for it. For him, whatever he had become. I believe that I listened to very few people but I must have listened to someone in the street or at the well because I learned that his followers had gone out on a ship. They sailed out on a ship at the time when my son had disappeared into the mountains, at a time when he did not want to be with his followers, when he fled not with me, as I implored him to do, but remained alone because he too must have seen the signs and the dangers. His followers, I was told, had taken an old boat on the sea and set out for some reason of their own towards Capernaum. It was dark and the sea began to rise by reason of a great sudden wind; it blew the vessel, which was too full, backwards and forwards and filled it with water as it was pulled each way, so that all of his followers felt they would drown. It was then, I was told, that he appeared to them in the moonlight and he was, or so my neighbours murmured that he was, actually walking on the water as though it were smooth dry land. And by his power he was calming the waves. He was doing what no one else could do. There must have been other stories, and perhaps this one I heard only in part, perhaps something else happened, or perhaps there was no wind, or he calmed the wind. I do not know. I put no thought into it.
I know that one day as I stood at the well a woman came and said that he could end the world if he wanted or make things grow to twice their size and I know that I turned away from her without filling my water jug and I walked back to the house and did not come out until the following day. I lived in a haze of waiting, trying still not to think or remember. I moved quietly within the four walls of the house or the garden or the fields. I needed very little nourishment. Sometimes one of the neighbours left food hanging from a hook by the side wall and when night fell I collected it. One day, when the knocking was louder and more insistent than usual and there was a man’s voice shouting, I heard the neighbours gathering in the road and telling whoever it was that there was no one inside. When the voice asked if this was not the house of my son and if I did not live within these walls, the neighbours told him yes, but that the house was empty now and locked and no one had been near it for some time. I stood on the inside of the door, listening, barely breathing, hardly making a sound.
I waited and weeks went by. Sometimes I did hear news. I knew that he had not gone to the mountains again and I knew also that Lazarus was still alive and, indeed, had become a subject for intense discussion at every well and every street corner, at every place where people gathered. I knew that people now waited outside Lazarus’s house to catch a glimpse of him, that all of the fear of him had gone. For those who gathered and gossiped it was a high time, filled with rumours and fresh news, filled with stories both true and wildly exaggerated. I lived mostly in silence, but somehow the wildness that was in the very air, the air in which the dead had been brought back to life and water changed into wine and the very waves of the sea made calm by a man walking on water, this great disturbance in the world made its way like creeping mist or dampness into the two or three rooms I inhabited.
When Marcus came I was expecting him. I heard knocking for a while and then I heard him asking a neighbour where I was. I opened the door for him. The shadows were gathering, but I did not light a lamp; it was a month or more since I had used a lamp. I offered him a chair at the table and then some water and some fruit. I told him to tell me what he could. He said that there was only one thing he had to tell me and I
should be ready to hear the worst. He said that a decision had been made to deal with the situation. He stopped for a moment and I thought it might be that my son would be banished or commanded not to appear in public or speak again. But I stood up and went towards the door and, for what reason I do not know, made as though to leave the house so I would not have to hear what he would now say. But I did not reach the door in time. He spoke flatly, firmly.
‘He is to be crucified,’ he said.
I turned and I knew from his statement that there was only one question to be asked.
‘When?’
‘Within a short time,’ he said. ‘He has moved back towards the centre of power and there are even more followers. The authorities know where he is and they can capture him at any time.’
And then I found myself asking a foolish question, but a question I had to ask.
‘Is there anything that can be done to stop this?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘but you must leave here as soon as it is dawn. They will come looking for all his followers.’
‘I am not one of his followers,’ I said.
