9

So okay. I hit him. Big deal. He was a weakling. Messiah? The man who was going to carry us to victory? You should’ve seen him. He couldn’t even carry his own cross. Stumbling this way and that! Pitiful. They had to pull some foreigner out of the crowd. To get that bit of wood up the hillside for our self-appointed hero the Romans had to commandeer a wog! That’s when I hit him.

And I promise you, that really threw him off his balance.

He looked at me. It was supposed to be one of those I-know-you-didn’t-mean-it-I-forgive-you looks. Blood, sweat and condescension. Turn the other cheek. So I walloped him again.

Then everybody cheered.

All right, I’m not a liar, not everybody. A lot of ’em. But anyway I didn’t hang around to milk my sixty seconds’ worth of glory. I wanted to get up the hill before he did—three crucifixions there were going to be—I didn’t want to miss a minute.

And at first it was fun, all but some of the women loved it. (Women of both sexes.) It came to him and they rammed that crown of thorns down even tighter. They bowed and spat and laughed and bowed again. They ripped off his clothes and pushed him to the ground. They stretched his arms along the crossbar—and still they joked and chuckled as they did it. They showed him the first nail. Good and thick and long and rusty; perhaps it had been used before. “This’ll knock a bit of sense into you, Yer Majesty! Let in the daylight, as it were!” I saw his mother’s face.

The stupid bitch.

Oh, God! Was it because the word rhymed? Bitch? Witch? I saw a woman tied to a stake and standing in the midst of fire. Even as I glanced, the flesh was turning to charred meat. I had to close my eyes. Me! Press my hands against my ears. It didn’t help. I threw up on the grass.

Then people stared at me and backed away and I realized I’d been dreaming. I felt asinine—ashamed. Went hot, cold. Unsteady at the knees. But, Christ Almighty! It was like the heat of those flames had been licking at my own body. I hardly dared look down. Half thought my garment would be scorched.

I made an effort, though. Huge effort. Controlled myself. Wiped my mouth clean. Cast out my own demons. I wasn’t a weakling. I wasn’t the kind of man demons should ever think to mix with. My God, I’d show ’em!

The stupid bitch, I said, looking back at his mother. Stupid bugger, I said, looking back at him. And for fully a minute I managed to enjoy his sweaty contortions almost as much as I had hoped. I remembered the insolence he’d shown towards my master when asked outright, “Are you the King of the Jews?” I bet he was wishing now he’d been a bit more diplomatic.

But then it happened again!

This time I saw a man on another kind of gibbet, only this time he was white-skinned like the burning woman (I think she was white-skinned!), pale-complexioned like all the strangely garbed spectators struggling now to get a closer view. Yes, white-skinned and writhing, with a rope around his neck (but not pulled tight, not yet; or do I mean, not any longer) and there was this…hangman? executioner?…playfully pricking out upon his stomach the journey which he meant his knife to take… Dear Lord! I felt the blade slice into my own gut, turn amidst my own entrails, cause the blood to run between my own outstretched fingers.

Yet there I was—still standing on the grass on Golgotha—thank God, oh thank God: me savagely scraping across the back of one hand with the fingernails of the other. I looked towards Jesus of Nazareth. But again! It wasn’t him I saw. It was two street children in Guatemala City (which wasn’t any place I’d ever heard of, I’m not an educated man, how could I be, just a slave in the governor’s palace)—urchins whose eyes were burnt out by police cigars, their tongues torn from their heads with pliers.

And I cried out.

No more. No more. Please stop.

I wailed.

I don’t know what cigars are, or pliers, or police, I don’t know any country but this, or any customs but ours, or any times but the times I live in.

I’m not sure who I cried out to—though one thing’s certain: I didn’t expect an answer. When I got one I fainted.

“No, as yet you don’t know them! But wait. Other customs and other countries—yes, and other times, as well. Oh, yes, Cartophilus! You’ll most certainly get to know them!”