I stared down at the stones, and then I started walking again.
"Very well then," he said, keeping pace with me, the bells jingling softly as he walked. "Let's return to your delusion. You are God. Now according to your cousin, God can raise up sons of Abraham from these stones, or those stones, or any stones, no? Well, then make these stones into bread. You need it badly enough, don't you?"
I turned and laughed at him. " 'Man doesn't live by bread alone,' " I answered him, " 'but by everything that proceeds from the mouth of God.' "
"What a wretchedly literal translation," he said, shaking his head, "and may I point out to you, my pious and deluded one, that your clothes have hardly been preserved during these mere forty days, like those of your ancestors in the forty years they wandered, but that you are a ragged beggar who will very soon be barefoot as well?"
I laughed again. "Nevertheless," I said, "I'm going on my way."
"Well," he said before I started, "it's too late for you to bury your father. That's been done."
I stopped.
"Oh, what, don't tell me the prophet whose birth was accompanied with so many signs and wonders doesn't know that his father, Joseph, is dead?"
I didn't answer. I felt my heart grow big and begin to throb in my ears. I looked out over the sandy wastes.
"Since you seem at best to be a sometime prophet," he went on in the same calm voice, my voice, "let me give you the picture. It was in a toll collector's tent that he breathed his last, and in a toll collector's arms, can you imagine, though his son sat nearby and your mother wept. And do you know how he spent his last few hours? Recounting to the toll collector and anyone else who happened to hear all he could remember of your birth - oh, you know the old song about the angel coming to your poor terrified mother, and the long trek to Bethlehem so that you might come howling into the world in the midst of the worst weather, and then the visit of angels on high to shepherds, of all people, and those men. The Magi. He told the toll collector about their coming as well. And then he died, raving, you might say, only softly so."
I looked forward, down at the desert floor. How far was it to the river?
"Weeping! Well, look, you are weeping," he said. "I never expected it. I expected you to be properly ashamed that such a righteous man would die in the arms of a well-respected thief, but I didn't expect such tears. After all, you did walk off and leave the old man at the river, did you not?"
I didn't answer.
He whistled to himself, idly, a little song such as one might whistle or hum as one strolled, and stroll he did around me in a circle as I stood there.
"Well," he said, squaring off in front of me. "You are tenderhearted, we know that much. But a prophet? I think not. As for the delusion that you created the entire world, well, let me remind you of what you no doubt already know: a delusion similar to that cost me my place above in the Heavenly Court."
"I think you gloss it over," I said. My voice was thick with tears, but my tears were drying in the hot desert wind.
"Ah, you speak to me, not to quote Scripture, but in actual words," he said. He laughed in a perfect imitation of my earlier laugh, and flashed a warm smile at me that was almost pretty.
"You know, holy men almost never do speak to me at all. They write long sonorous poetry about my speaking to the Lord of Creation and His speaking to me, but they themselves, the scribes? At the mere mention of my name, they run shrieking in dread."
"And you do so love to have your name mentioned, don't you?" I said. "No matter what name it is." I went on slowly. "Ahriman, Mastema, Satanel, Satan, Lucifer . . . you love it, don't you, when you're addressed?"
He was silenced.
"Beelzebub," I said. "Is that your favorite?" I said it in Greek: "Lord of the Flies."
"I loathe that name!" he said with a flare of rage. "I will not answer to any of those names," he said.
"Of course you won't. What name could ever rescue you from the chaos that's your very purpose?" I asked. "Demon, devil, adversary." I shook my head. "No, don't answer to them. Don't answer to the name Azazel, either. Names are what you dream of, names and purpose and hope, of which you have none."
I turned and started to walk on.
He caught up with me.
"Why are you talking to me?" he asked in a perfect rage.
"Why are you talking to me!"
"Signs and wonders," he said, the blood flaring in his cheeks - or so he would have it seem. "Too many signs and wonders surround you, my miserable ragged friend. And I've talked to you before. I came to you once in your dreams."
"I remember," I said. "And you took on the raiment of beauty then too. It must be something you want so badly."
"You know nothing of me. You have no idea! I was the firstborn of the Lord you claim as your father, you miserable beggar."
"Careful," I said. "If you become too angry you may dissolve in a puff of smoke."
"This is no jest, you fledgling prophet," he said. "I don't come and go at whim."
"Go at whim," I said. "That will be sufficient."
"Do you know who I really am?" he asked, and his face was broken suddenly with grief. "Well, I will tell you." And in Hebrew, he spoke the words: "Helel ben-Shahar."
"Bright sun of morning," I said. I raised my right hand and snapped my fingers. "I see you falling . . . like that."
A terrific roar went up around me, and the sand went flying as if a storm had come out of the placid sunlight and was about to carry me down the cliff.
I felt myself drawn upwards with spectacular speed and suddenly another roar, more familiar and immense, surrounded me, and I stopped short at the edge of the parapet of the Temple, the Temple in Jerusalem, under the huge sky, and above the enormous crowds of those who wandered in and out of it. I was standing on the pinnacle. I was looking down into the vast lower courts.
The sounds and scents of the crowd rose up in my nostrils. I felt the hunger so deeply it was a pain. And out on all sides lay the rooftops of Jerusalem while the people swarmed below in its tangle of narrow streets.
"Look on all this," he said beside me.
"And why should I?" I asked. "It's not really there."
"No? You don't believe it? You think it's an illusion?"
"You're full of illusions and lies."
"Then fling yourself down, now, from this height. Fling yourself down into that crowd. We'll see if it's an illusion. And what if it is not? Is it not written, 'He will give His angels charge of you, and on their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.' "