Pilgermann by Russell Hoban Read Free Book Online

Italian, he’s one of theirs but they want no part of him, he’s too dangerous. When Jairus says to them, ‘What then may I do to Jesus called Christ?’ the assembled senators, officials, priests, and hangers-on all say, ‘Let him be crucified.’ Jairus is willing to let the Romans sort things out in their own way. He washes his hands before the crowd, he says, ‘Innocent am I from the blood of this man; ye will see to it.’ And the assembled Romans say, ‘On his own head let the blood of him be.’ I listen and I listen but no one says, ‘The blood of him on us and on the children of us.’
    The Jewish legionaries scourge this Italian Jesus and they nail him to a cross on the Capitoline Hill. After his death I mingle with the crowd, I listen to what they are saying.
    ‘Lousy Christ-killers!’ says the man next to me.
    ‘Who?’ I say.
    ‘Who?’ says the man. ‘Those murdering Jews! Who else?’
    ‘I thought perhaps you meant the Romans who told the Jews to do it,’ I say.
    ‘Never mind that,’ he says. ‘Who’s governing Rome? Who put Jesus on the cross, eh? Who drove in the nails? It was those lousy Christ-killers, it was those murdering Jews.’
    I turn to others in the crowd. ‘Those lousy Jews!’ is what they all say. ‘Those Christ-killers!’
    Here I leave the Italian Jesus; I don’t know whether or not he rose up and made further appearances.
    Night, night, night. Perhaps the only realities are night and departure. Everything else is illusion. Staying anywhere in the light of day is illusion. If there were no Jews they would have to be invented.
    Yes, I am a child of the night, a child of departures. The barking of dogs is my signpost, the voices of owls mark my road into the darkness. Inside my head I have stopped talking, I am quiet. I give myself to the old, old night that waits within me, the old, old night in the old, old wood. In this night the charcoal-burnerscrouch listening by their hearths while the trees pray, the wind speaks, the leaves rustle like souls departing with the upward-flying sparks. Quiet, quiet, the mist is rising from the river, the bats are writing the names of darkness, the owl is teaching the mice: ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.’
    I listen for my Bath Kol but I hear only the thumping of my heart and the sound of my footfalls. Why am I on this road through the dark wood? I am afraid. What have I to sustain me? Jesus has appeared to me but what have I to do with Jesus? I think of the tax-collector, perhaps he too has passed through this wood wondering what would sustain him. ‘Thou Jew!’ whispers the Bath Kol suddenly, whispers the Bath Kol in my ear in the dark wood. ‘My Jew!’ whispers the Bath Kol.
    In fear I go forward. The quietness of the Bath Kol draws itself together in the dark, becomes a point of silence from which a hugeness grows. In the hugeness I perceive this wood, this rising ground to be the Mount of Venus between the opened thighs of the mother-space that is time. The wood is clamorous with the silence of birds and demons and great wordless mouths full of sharp teeth. When I close my eyes I see the colour of the dark: it is a strong purple-blue, very luminous and vibrating like a crystal. In those crystalline vibrations I seem to see a pale green phosphorescence in the shape of a man hanging head downward by one leg. He is hung by one ankle, his other leg is bent, the bent leg crossing the straight to make an upside-down figure four. His arms are bent to make a triangle on each side, his hands are behind him. He fades with the purple-blue and I hear the low voice of a bell that nods to the walking of an animal. ‘Thou also,’ says the rough and broken voice of the bell, so I know it to be the bell hung from the neck of Death’s pale horse. I see Death on his horse, all luminous bones that look as if they would clatter but they move in perfect silence. Death beckons and I follow through the dark wood in which he