Thirty-Seven
He arrived at the courtyard and waited, and the night wore on. Toward the third watch, the members of the Sanhedrin came out of the courtroom, talking to each other. John waited by the door, to see if he could meet Nicodemus, and finally he emerged. "Can you tell me what happened?" he asked.
"Who are--ah, yes, you were with him, were you not?" he whispered. "Come apart here." and he went over to a secluded corner, in shadow.
"He has been condemned, I suppose."
He sighed. "He has. I thought he might just escape, since he said nothing at all, and of course, we could not get any two witnesses to agree. Some said the most absurd things! You cannot imagine!"
"I would prefer not to try."
"Wise lad. But the High Priest became desperate; it looked as if we could find no excuse to condemn him--though everyone believed him guilty, I must admit. So finally, the High Priest said, 'I command you, in the name of the Living God, to tell us if you are the Prince, the Son of God.' Well, he had the authority to command Jesus, and so he answered, 'You are correct. And I tell you that after this time, you will see the Son of Man enthroned beside the Power, and coming upon the clouds of heaven.' Well, there was no way to save him then. The High Priest tore at his robe, and said, 'He has blasphemed! What need have we of more witnesses? You yourselves have heard the blasphemy!'"
"It was not blasphemy, you know. It is hard to believe, but if you had seen all I have seen. . ."
"I have seen enough, youngster. I have seen enough. But there is no convincing them. Especially since they are terrified that his claim to be King will bring the Romans down upon us!"
"I am certain that that would not happen, if we accepted him."
"I suppose not. But they could not be made to believe it. No, they will find a way to degrade him in the eyes of the people out there, and then it will be all over."
"I know. That is what he himself thinks. He seems to think that if he is rejected, then it is only by making himself the Suffering Servant that he can save the rest of us from our sins."
"Well, that was the prophesy, was it not?"
"It seems to have been one of them. The other was what would happen if he were accepted."
"Ah, then you think--that had not occurred to me. What a tragedy! What a catastrophe!"
"The Master does nothing in vain. And he wished to give us a chance to undo what Adam did. But we will fail again."
"I suppose it was inevitable."
"Given the miserable, wretched fools! that we are! I cannot stand it!"
"But I must go. There will be more meetings, and I must be there. Peace." He laughed, sardonically. "There will never be peace again!"
"Peace, Nicodemus. If after all this, you wish to join us, we will be in the house--" and he whispered the address of the place they had met for the Last Supper.
"I know it. May God have mercy on all of us!"
"Amen," said John, as Nicodemus left.
And he waited an eternity, watching people come and go. They had taken Jesus somewhere, and there were noises coming from the place. John could not bear to hear them.
And he waited.
Then, around dawn, a group of guards, one of whom seemed to be the centurion Matthew knew, took a battered, broken Jesus out of the palace toward the Antonia, where the Governor, Pontius Pilate, had his headquarters. John followed.
And he waited, outside on what they called the "Pavement," looking up at a balcony where the Governor sometimes appeared. The members of the Sanhedrin did not enter, because that night was the Passover, and they would defile themselves if they went into a Gentile's establishment. A crowd gathered.
And they waited.
The governor emerged, and asked, "What is the charge you are bringing against this man?" referring to Jesus, who had gone in with him.
"If he were not a criminal, we would not have brought him before you," was the shouted answer from one of the Judeans.
"Very well, then you take him and try him by your own laws."
"We are not allowed to put anyone to death!" they shouted. Pilate shrugged, and smiled his customary meaningless smile, and went back inside to speak once again to Jesus.
And they waited.
After a while, a rather nervous Pilate emerged, still with his false smile, and said, "I do not see that you have a case against him. And you have a custom that I let a prisoner go for you at the Passover. Do you wish me to release this 'King of Judea'?"
"Not him!" shouted the Pharisees. "Barabbas!" Pilate was not happy about this, but he went back inside, apparently to prepare Jesus for execution.
And they waited. For a long time.
Finally, a definitely nervous Pilate came out again and said, "I am now going to bring him out, to show you that I find nothing wrong with what he did." And Jesus emerged, full of blood and spittle, wearing a red soldier's cloak as if it were royal robes, and a crown on his head that seemed to be made of thorns. He swayed and almost fell, and one of the guards held him up. "There is your man," said Pilate; "look at him."
The people were too shocked to say anything for a moment, and then one of the Pharisees shouted, "Crucify him!" and the cry became a chorus. "Crucify him!"
He had been disgraced and degraded, as John feared, and the crowd instantly turned against him.
"You take him yourselves and crucify him," shouted Pilate over the din. "I have no crime to charge him with."
"We have a law," they screamed, "and that law says he has to die, because he made himself the Son of God!"
Pilate looked at Jesus with alarm and consternation. He went back inside with him. What was this? Had Jesus convinced him that he was more than human?
And they waited.
The Judeans were conferring as to what to do if he said he would let him go. They seemed to come to a consensus on the best answer.
Pilate came out, and in a shaken voice said, "I am going to release him. I--"
"If you let him go, you are no ally of Caesar!" they shouted. Everyone who claims to be King is committing treason against Caesar!"
Pilate, trembling with fear that a riot would start, had his judgment-seat brought out and called for Jesus to be brought also. He stood him beside himself and said, "Look at him! That is your King!" It sounded as if he meant it.
But they had won, and they knew it. "Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!"
"You want me to crucify your King?" said Pilate.
"We have no King but Caesar!" they shouted.
Pilate's face gradually relaxed into the self-satisfied smile he usually wore, and he sentenced Jesus to be crucified, first washing his hands in front of the people and claiming that he himself was innocent of his blood. No one paid attention. There was screaming and shouting everywhere, but there was no one who was a partisan of Jesus; they were all against him, now that they had seen him beaten and degraded. They only wanted the degradation to be complete by seeing him hanging naked on a cross, fouling himself with his own excrement.
And then Jesus and two other prisoners emerged, heavily guarded, with the cross-beams of their crosses on their backs. Jesus almost collapsed under his cross right at the beginning, because he had spent the night after that dreadful agony in the garden being beaten and mocked by the High Priest's guards, and then apparently whipped within an inch of his life by Pilate's soldiers, who afterward crowned him with the thorns and beat him over the head as they spat on him.
And after several steps, he did fall, and looked as if he was not going to get up. The soldiers lifted him to his feet again, and began looking around. Their eyes fastened on a man almost as big as Andrew, and they told him to carry Jesus's cross behind him. They did not want him dying before he experienced the crucifixion itself.
On the way, Jesus saw his mother, who looked as if she were about to faint. They nodded to each other, silently. Jesus had to save his breath, and Mary had no words. John went up beside her and held her hand.
There were a number of women there also, who were not of those who were cursing and mocking him, and he did stop and say something to them as they wept. But the noise of the crowd was so great that John, who was only several cubits behind him, could not hear. He was trying to shield Mary from being pummeled and shoved by the crowds who were jostling for a better view.
Jesus fell again, now without the burden of the cross. And John fell mentally with him, as Mary all but collapsed at his side. She said not a word, nor did she weep openly, but she could barely walk. He put his arm about her to support her, hoping that he himself would not collapse. His sleepless night and the tension and the agony were beginning to overcome him.
And Jesus slipped on the stones of the narrow street and fell once again, now about ten or a dozen cubits ahead of them, with the Skull Place in sight. It looked as if he could not get up this time, but the--the centurion was the one Matthew knew!--lifted him rather gently, with a look of extreme anguish on his face. Did he know who?--was he not the one whose commander's son was saved from death by a mere word from Jesus? He was! Then he must know who it was he was about to execute!
After an eternity, they arrived, and the prisoners were stripped and laid on top of the crossbeams. The centurion himself drove the nails into the heels of Jesus's hands. Jesus said something, and the centurion paused with eyes closed in pain and the mallet raised, and almost dropped it, but then steeled himself and drove the nail in, after which Jesus and the crossbeam were lifted onto the upright, and his feet nailed, one beside the other, onto the upright. The others were crucified in the same way, one on each side of Jesus. The screams were blood-curdling, though Jesus himself merely kept grunting in agony, trying to find a position which was not absolutely intolerable, and not finding one. He arched his back, but that drove the thorns into the back of his head, and apparently that pain was the worst of all.
John stood there with Mary and her relative, Clopas's Mary; and then Mary Magdalene came up with them. And they watched and waited.
And waited.
And the soldiers finally began dividing the clothes they had taken off the prisoners; but when they saw that Jesus's tunic had no seams, one of them said, "We should not tear it; it will be worth more intact. Let us play dice for it." And John remembered the psalm--the first lines of which Jesus had shouted just moments ago on the cross! "My God, my God! Why have you abandoned me?" and in the middle, it said, "They have pierced my hands and my feet. I can count all my bones. They have divided my clothes among them and played at dice for what I was wearing"! David had foretold this!
He looked at Mary and said, "This was prophesied!"
She answered. "I know."
"But what can it mean?"
"Ours," she answered, "is not to understand it; merely to endure it."
And they looked on at the increasing horror, as it grew dark in the middle of the day, without a cloud in the sky.
Someone screamed, "It is an eclipse of the sun!" and someone else answered, "No. Eclipses only happen on the new moon. The moon passes in front of the sun. The moon is now full. The sun is losing its light!"
"God have mercy on us!" Everyone began beating his breast.
Jesus looked over at his mother and John, and said, "Madam, thatis--that isyour--son." and then he said to John, "Thatisyour--mother." John, his eyes overflowing, took her hand again.
The centurion found Matthew in the crowd, and went over to him, speaking to him with a look of terror on his face.
And then Jesus said, "I am thirsty." and the centurion, in panic at the darkness, since it was almost as if it were night, called for a sponge, and dipped it in the bucket of wine the soldier had, putting it on his spear and holding it to Jesus's lips.
When he had moistened them, he said, "It is over!" and screamed and let his head drop.
And the scream prolonged itself into a huge roar, and the ground shook, and the rock on which they were standing split under them. Everyone fell to the ground.
--And then the sun shone again, the ground stabilized itself, and Jesus was dead.
The centurion looked at him with dread and said, "He really was the Son of God!"
Some of the others, now insolent because the world had not come to an end, approached him and pointed to the sign above his head. "It should not say, 'The King of Judea,' it should say, 'He claimed to be the King of Judea.' The centurion said, "You will have to take that up with Pontius Pilate himself. I have simply obeyed his orders." They left.
And they waited.
John finally said, "It cannot be long now. They will not leave him or the others hanging after sundown, because it is the Passover." And Joseph of Arimathea came, with an order from the governor, and the soldiers broke the legs of those beside Jesus, who screamed in their last agony and died; and then the centurion, since he saw that Jesus was already dead, took his lance and drove it into Jesus's side, whereupon what looked like two liquids, red and clear, flowed out.
"You see, he is dead," he remarked to one of the other soldiers. "The blood does that after death."
Then Joseph, Nicodemus, Andrew, John, and several others managed to take the body of Jesus down from the cross as the sun began to set.
They hurriedly rubbed the myrrh and aloes over the body, racing to beat the sun, and Joseph said, "My own tomb is just over the way. It would be an honor if he were buried in it."
The others agreed, because it was nearby, and the sun was already on the horizon. So they wrapped Jesus quickly with the spices in linen, and carried his body to the tomb, rolling a stone over it just as the Sabbath was about to begin.
John then took Mary, his new mother, under the arm and escorted her to the place where Jesus had given them the meat of his body to eat. They said nothing, and entered, finding one or two already there, also completely silent. They sat against a wall, Mary in the corner, wrapped in her own misery, and existed.