Behold the Man Read online

  The strange, mad prophet in his swirling linen robes, followed by the heterogeneous crowd that was primarily com-posed of poor folk but also could be seen to contain men of some distinction, swept into Capernaum. The news spread that this man really could foretell the future, that he had already predicted the arrest of John by Herod Antipas and soon after Herod had imprisoned the Baptist at Peraea. He did not make the predictions in general terms, using vague words the way other prophets did. He spoke of things that were to happen in the near future and he spoke of them in detail.

  None knew his name. He was simply the prophet from Nazareth, or the Nazarene. Some said he was a relative, perhaps the son, of .a carpenter in Nazareth, but this could be because the written words for "son of a carpenter" and

  "magus" were almost the same and the confusion had come about in that way. There was even a very faint rumor that his name was Jesus. The name had been used once or twice, but when they asked him if that was, indeed, his name, he denied it or else, in his abstracted way, refused to answer at all.

  His actual preaching tended to lack the fire of John's.

  This man spoke gently, rather vaguely, and smiled often.

  He spoke of God in a strange way, too, and he appeared to be connected, as John was, with the Essenes, for he preached against the accumulation of personal wealth and spoke of mankind as a brotherhood, as they did.

  But it was the miracles that they watched for as he was guided to the graceful synagogue of Capernaum. No prophet before him had healed the sick and seemed to understand the troubles that people rarely spoke of. It was his sympathy that they responded to, rather than the words he spoke.

  For the first time in his life, Karl Glogauer had forgotten about Karl Glogauer. For the first time in his life he was doing what he had always sought to do as a psychiatrist.

  But it was not his life. He was bringing a myth to life a generation before that myth would be born. He was completing a certain kind of psychic circuit. He was not changing history, but he was giving history more substance.

  He could not bear to think that Jesus had been nothing more than a myth. It was in his power to make Jesus a physical reality rather than the creation of a process of mythogenesis.

  So he spoke in the synagogues and he spoke of a gentler God than most of them had heard of, and where he could remember them, he told them parables.

  And gradually the need to justify what' he was doing faded and his sense of identity grew increasingly more ten-uous and was replaced by a different sense of identity, where he gave greater and greater substance to the role he had chosen. It was an archetypal role. It was a role to appeal to a disciple of Jung. It was a r61e that went beyond a mere imitation. It was a role that he must now play out to the very last grand detail. Karl Glogauer had discovered the reality he had been seeking.

  And in the synagogue there was a man, which had a spirit of an unclean devil, and cried out with a loud voice, saying. Let us alone; what have we to do with thee, thou Jesus of Nazareth? art thou come to destroy us? I know thee who thou art; the Holy One of God. And Jesus rebuked him, saying. Hold thy peace, and come out of him. And when the devil had thrown him in the midst, he came out of him, and hurt him not. And they were all amazed, and spake among themselves, saying. What a word is this! for with authority and power he commandeth the unclean spirits, and they come out. And the fame of him went out into every place of the country round about.

  (Luke 4:33-37)

  "Mass hallucination. Miracles, flying saucers, ghosts, it's all the same," Monica had said.

  "Very likely," he had replied. "But why did they see them?"

  "Because they wanted to."

  "Why did they want to?"

  "Because they were afraid."

  "You think that's all there is to it?"

  "Isn't it enough?"

  When he left Capernaum for the first time, many more people accompanied him. It had become impractical to stay in the town, for the business of the town had been brought almost to a standstill by the crowds that sought to see him work his simple miracles.

  He spoke to them in the spaces beyond the towns. He talked with intelligent, literate men who appeared to have something in common with him. Some of them were the owners of fishing fleetsSimon, James and John among them. Another was a doctor, another a civil servant who bad first heard him speak in Capernaum.

  "There must be twelve," he said to them one day. "There must be a zodiac."

  He was not careful in what he said. Many of his ideas were strange. Many of the things he talked about were unfamiliar to them. Some Pharisees thought he blasphemed.

  One day he met a man he recognized as an Essene from the colony near Machaerus.

  "John would speak with you," said the Essene.

  "Is John not dead yet?" he asked the man.

  "He is confined at Peraea. I would think Herod is too frightened to kill him. He lets John walk about within the walls and gardens of the palace, lets him speak with his men, but John fears that Herod will find the courage soon to have him stoned or decapitated. He needs your help."

  "How can I help him? He is to die. There is no hope for him."

  The Essene looked uncomprehendingly into the mad eyes of the prophet.

  "But, master, there is no one else who can help him."

  "I have done all that he wished me to do," said the prophet. "I have healed the sick and preached to the poor."

  "I did not know he wished this. Now he needs help, master. You could save his life."

  The prophet had drawn the Essene away from the crowd.

  "His life cannot be saved."

  "But if it is not the unrighteous will prosper and the Kingdom of Heaven will not be restored."

  "His life cannot be saved."

  "Is it God's will?"

  "If I am God, then it is God's will."

  Hopelessly, the Essene turned and began to walk away from the crowd.

  John the Baptist would have to die. Glogauer had no wish to change history, only to strengthen it.

  He moved on, with his following, through Galilee. He had selected his twelve educated men, and the rest who followed him were still primarily poor people. To them he offered their only hope of fortune. Many were those who had been ready to follow John against the Romans, but now John was imprisoned. Perhaps this man would lead them in revolt, to loot the riches of Jerusalem and Jericho and Caesarea. Tired and hungry, their eyes glazed by the burning sun, they followed the man in the white robe.

  They needed to hope and they found reasons for their hope.

  They saw him work greater miracles.

  Once he preached to them from a boat, as was often his custom, and as he walked back to the shore through the shallows, it seemed to them that he walked over the water.

  All through Galilee in the autumn they wandered, hearing from everyone the news of John's beheading. Despair at the Baptist's death turned to renewed hope in this new prophet who had known him.

  In Caesarea they were driven from the city by Roman guards used to the wildmen with their prophecies who roamed the country.

  They were banned from other cities as the prophet's fame grew. Not only the Roman authorities, but the Jewish ones as well seemed unwilling to tolerate the new prophet as they had tolerated John. The political climate was changing.

  It became hard to find food. They lived on what they could find, hiingerfng like starved animals.

  He taught them how to pretend to eat and take their minds off their hunger.

  Karl Glogauer, witch-doctor, psychiatrist, hypnotist, messiah.

  Sometimes his conviction in his chosen r61e wavered and those that followed him would be disturbed when he con-tradicted himself. Often, now, they called him the name they had heard, Jesus the Nazarene. Most of the time he did not stop them from using the name, but at others he became angry and cried a peculiar, guttural name.

  "Karl Glogaueri Karl Glogauer!"

  And they said. Behold, he speaks with the voice of A
donai.

  "Call me not by that name!" he would shout, and they would become disturbed and leave him by himself until his anger had subsided.

  When the weather changed and the winter came, they went back to Capernaum, which had become a stronghold of his followers.

  In Capernaum he waited the winter through, making prophecies.

  Many of these prophecies concerned himself and the fate-, of those that followed him.

  Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem,
  (Matthew 16:20-21)

  They were watching television at her flat. Monica was eating an apple. It was between six and seven on a warm Sunday evening. Monica gestured at the screen with her half-eaten apple.

  "Look at that nonsense," she said. "You can't honestly tell me it means anything to you."

  The program was a religious one, about a pop-opera in a Hampstead Church. The opera told the story of the crucifixion.

  "Pop-groups in the pulpit," she said. "What a comedown."

  He didn't reply. The program seemed obscene to him, in an obscure way. He couldn't argue with her.

  "God's corpse is really beginning to rot now," she jeered.

  "Whew! The stinki"

  "Turn it off, then," he said quietly.

  "What's the pop-group called? The Maggots?"

  "Very funny. I'll turn it off, shall I?"

  "No, I want to watch. It's funny."

  "Oh, turn it off!"

  "Imitation of Christ!" she snorted. "It's a bloody carica-ture."

  A Negro singer, who was playing Christ and singing flat to a banal accompaniment, began to drone out lifeless lyrics about the brotherhood of man.

  "If he sounded like that, no wonder they nailed him up,"

  said Monica.

  He reached forward and switched the picture off.

  "I was enjoying it." She spoke with mock disappointment.

  "It was a lovely swan-song."

  Later, she said with a trace of affection that worried him,

  "You old fogey. What a pity. You could have been John

  --Wesley or Calvin or someone. You can't be a messiah these days, not in your terms. There's nobody to listen."

  6

  The prophet was living in the house of a man called Simon, though the prophet preferred to call him Peter. Simon was grateful to the prophet because he had cured his wife of a complaint which she had suffered from for some time. It had been a mysterious complaint, but the prophet had cured her almost effortlessly.

  There were a great many strangers in Capernaum at that time, many of them coming to see the prophet. Simon warned the prophet that some were known agents of the Romans or the Pharisees. The Pharisees had not, on the whole, been antipathetic towards the prophet, though they distrusted the talk of miracles that 'they heard. However, the whole political atmosphere was disturbed and the Roman occupation troops, from Pilate, through his officers, down to the troops, were tease, expecting an outbreak but unable to see any tangible signs that one was coming.

  Pilate himself hoped for trouble on a large scale. It would prove to Tiberius that the emperor had been too lenient with the Jews over the matter of the votive shields. Pilate would be vindicated and his power over the Jews increased.. At present he was on bad terms with all the Tetrarchs of the provincesparticularly the unstable Herod Antipas who had seemed at one time his only supporter. Aside from the political situation, his own domestic situation was upset in that his neurotic wife was having her nightmares again and was demanding far more attention from him than he could afford to give her.

  There might be a possibility, he thought, of provoking an incident, but he would have to be careful that Tiberius never learnt of it. This new prophet might provide a focus, but so far the man had done nothing against the laws of either the Jews or the Romans. There was no law that forbade a man to claim he was a messiah, as some said this one had done, and he was hardly inciting the people to revoltrather the contrary.

  Looking through the window of his chamber, with a view of the minarets and spires of Jerusalem, Pilate considered the information his spies had brought him.

  .Soon after the festival that the Romans called Saturnalia, the prophet and his followers left Capernaum again and began to travel through the country.

  There were fewer miracles now that the hot weather had passed, but his prophecies were eagerly asked. He warned them of all the mistakes that would be made in the future, and of all the crimes that would be committed in his name.

  Through Galilee he wandered, and through Samaria, following the good Roman roads towards Jerusalem.

  The time of the Passover was coming close now.

  In Jerusalem, the Roman officials discussed the coming festival. It was always a time of the worst disturbances.

  There had been riots before during the Feast of the Passover, and doubtless there would be trouble of some kind this year, too.

  Pilate spoke to the Pharisees, asking for their cooperation.

  The Pharisees said they would do what they could, but they could not help it if the people acted foolishly.

  Scowling, Pilate dismissed them.

  His agents brought him reports from all over the territory.

  Some of the reports mentioned the new prophet, but said that he was harmless.

  Pilate thought privately that he might be harmless now, but if he reached Jerusalem during the Passover, he might not be so harmless.

  Two weeks before the Feast of the Passover, the prophet reached the town of Bethany near Jerusalem. Some of his Galilean followers had friends in Bethany and these friends were more than willing to shelter the man they bad heard of from other pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem and the Great Temple.

  The reason they had come to Bethany was that the prophet had become disturbed at the number of the people following him.

  "There are too many," he had said to Simon. "Too many, Peter."

  Glogauer's face was haggard now. His eyes were set deeper into their sockets and he said little.

  Sometimes he would look around him vaguely, as if unsure where he was.

  News came to the house in Bethany that Roman agents had been making inquiries about him. It did not seem to disturb him. On the contrary, he nodded thoughtfully, as if satisfied.

  Once he walked with two of his followers across country to look at Jerusalem. The bright yellow walls of the city looked splendid in the afternoon light. The towers and tall buildings, many of them decorated in mosaic reds, blues and yellows, could be seen from several miles away.

  The prophet turned back towards Bethany.

  "When shall we go into Jerusalem?" one of his followers asked him.

  "Not yet," said Glogauer. His shoulders were hunched and he grasped his chest with his arms and hands as if cold.

  Two days before the Feast of the Passover in Jerusalem, the prophet took his men towards the Mount of Olives and a suburb of Jerusalem that was built on its side and called Bethphage.

  "Get me a donkey," he told them. "A colt. I must fulfill the prophecy now."

  "Then all will know you are the Messiah," said Andrew.

  "Yes."

  Glogauer sighed. He felt afraid again, but this time it was not physical fear. It was the fear of an .actor who was about to make his final, most dramatic scene and who was not sure he could do it well.

  There was cold sweat on Glogauer's upper lip. He wiped it off.

  In the poor light he peered at the men around him. He was still uncertain of some of their names. He was not interested in their names, particularly, only in their number.

  There were ten here. The other two were looldng for the donkey.

  They stood on the grassy slope of the Mount of Olives, looking towards Jerusalem and the great Temple which lay below. The
re was a light, warm breeze blowing.

  "Judas?" said Glogauer inquiringly.

  There was one called Judas.

  "Yes, master," he said. He was tall and good looking, with curly red hair and neurotic intelligent eyes. Glogauer believed he was an epileptic.

  Glogauer looked thoughtfully at Judas Iscariot. "I will want you to help me later," be said, "when we have entered Jerusalem."

  "How, master?"

  "You must take a message to the Romans."

  "The Romans?" Iscariot looked troubled. "Why?"

  "It must be the Romans. It can't be the Jewsthey would use a stake or an axe. I'll tell you more when the time comes."

  The sky was dark now, and the stars were out over the Mount of Olives. It had become cold. Glogauer shivered.

  Rejoice greatly 0 daughter of Zion,

  Shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem:

  Behold, thy King cometh unto thee!

  He is just and having salvation;

  Lowly and riding upon an ass,

  And upon a colt, the foal of an ass.

  (Zechariah 9:9)

  "Osha'na! Osha'na! Oshc/na!"

  As Glogauer rode the donkey into the city, his followers ran ahead, throwing down palm branches. On both sides of the street were crowds, forewarned by the followers of his coming.

  Now the new prophet could be seen to be fulfilling the prophecies of the ancient prophets and many believed that he had come to lead them against the Romans. Even now, possibly, he was on his way to Pilate's house to confront the procurator.

  "Osha'na! Osha'na!"

  Glogauer looked around distractedly. The back of the donkey, though softened by the coats of his followers, was uncomfortable. He swayed and clung to the beast's mane. He heard the words, but could not make them out clearly.

  "Osha'na! Osha'na!"

  It sounded like "hosanna" at first, before he realized that they were shouting the Aramaic for "Free us."

  "Free us! Free usi"

  John had planned to rise in arms against the Romans this Passover. Many had expected to take part in the rebellion.