Fifth Gospel(36)

17


WATERMAN




John, son of Elisabeth and Zacharias, neared his thirtieth year.

In fulfilment of his father’s vow to God he had been taken as a child to the Nazarites to be instructed. Thereafter he had lived in the desert among the peoples of the caves and the peoples of the gorges, and for this reason he now remembered little of his mother and father, and his youth in Hebron. Instead, he remembered other things: the surface of the salty sea, the scorched winds that fanned the palms, the taste of cool waters flowing from natural springs, and the endless round of fasting and deprivation, which formed a part of the life of every Nazarite. He had never taken a razor to the head, He had abstained always from any fermented drink, ate no animal flesh and had never come near a dead body. Moreover, the exercises he had endured since childhood and continued to endure had been harsh, the maceration and mortification of the flesh had hardened his body and loosened his soul in readiness for the coming of the Messiah.

Towards this end he spent long days and even longer nights in meditation and fasting, sitting before the mouth of his cave with his throat parched and his hunger gnawing and biting him like a ravenous animal. The cave was located in the walls of a steep gorge. From its lip he could look over the mountainous wilderness of Judea, over the death-imbued waters of the Dead Sea and the rigid bareness of the low lying deserts. This landscape recalled to him the impoverishment of the human soul; the soul that chose only a striving for earthly things. In the distance he could also see that other place, which had once been cursed by God – Gomorrah. This was now the colony of the Essenes, who came to call it Qumran.

He would sometimes go to Qumran and on the way he would pause to visit those little colonies that here and there dotted the wilderness. He spoke to the people of these hamlets of his hopes for the coming of the Messiah. But the people did not hear his words with open ears, for they possessed lame spirits.

He often spent time at Qumran, for he acknowledged the struggle for purity of the Essenes, and they, in turn, seemed to approve of his pious life and allowed him to enter their cloisters from time to time, disclosing some of their ways to him. He knew they only did so, however, in the hope that he might incline his heart towards them. But he had always sensed something misshapen in their teaching and for this reason he never remained long with them, preferring the solitude of his cell, his own rules, and his own ways.

It was on such a visit to Qumran, that John met the man whom they called Jesus of Nazareth.

The day of the meeting he was sat on the highest pinnacle of the Essene house, feeling particularly troubled. A deep gloom had settled over the expanses, making the desert’s pillars and domes seem to him like sinister beings. The entire world seemed cast in murky tones by the grey-green clouds of an oncoming storm, which loomed above and made his bones and sinews creak – a storm, sure enough, caused by the devil.

He was torn from his thoughts by a voice.

‘You are the prophet?’ The voice said, and when John turned to look, he saw that it came from a man no older than he, a man who was tall, brown of skin, fair of hair, with eyes that were neither brown nor green nor blue: the eyes of a Galilean, a stranger of mixed heritage.

He did not like strangers.

‘If I am a prophet,’ he said, turning around again, ‘then I am a solitary one.’

The Galilean did not seem put off by him, which in itself was enough to make him curious.

‘All prophets are solitary,’ the other man pointed out, sitting next to him. ‘Elijah was a voice in the wilderness, unknown by a world that did whatsoever it wished with him.’

John made a huff. ‘What good did Elijah do? The souls of men have not changed, the world remains the same.’

‘Did you hope you would find it otherwise?’ the other man said.

What was this question that did not seek an answer, but seemed to be the answer itself? He took a closer look at the silhouette of the man sitting beside him. He was gazing out at the desert as if it were a pleasure garden! On the one hand, this man seemed as old as Abraham and on the other, there was something fresh and youthful that played about his eyes. The perception of these opposing natures made John fall into bewilderment and he did not know what to make of it, so he did something rare – he smiled.

‘What is your name? It seems to me that we have met before.’

The stranger said, ‘I am Jesus. I was born in Bethlehem, but I come from Nazareth.’

‘Nazareth?’ John said, ‘Nothing good ever came out of Nazareth, isn’t that what they say?’

‘Yes…that is what they say,’ the stranger looked at him, with a wide smile in his colourful eyes.