"Oh, you have been a murderer from the beginning," I said. "You would so love to see me tumble, downwards, see my bones break, see this face you so clearly imitate bruised and shattered, but it's more than that you want, isn't it? The body's nothing to you, no matter how mercilessly you torment it. You want my soul."
"No, you are wrong," he said in a low voice, leaning as close to me as he could. "And we are here, yes, I've brought you here, not by illusions and lies, but to show you the very place where you must begin your work. It's you who claim to be the Christ. It's you whom others herald as the Son of David, the prince who will lead his people to victory in battle, it's you and your people who have celebrated your great power and eventual conquest in book after book, and poem after poem. Throw yourself down! I say, Do it, and let the angels sweep you up. Let your battle begin with that pact between you and the Lord you claim to serve!"
"I will not put the Lord to the test here," I said. "And that too is written, 'You shall not tempt the Lord your God.' "
"Where then will you begin your battle?" he asked as if he sincerely wanted to know. "How will you raise your armies? How will you proclaim your message throughout the Jews of all this land and the next and the next after that? How will you get word to the far-flung communities of Jews throughout the Empire that it's time for them to buckle on sword and shield under your banner and in the name of your God?"
"I knew it when I was a child," I said, regarding him.
"Knew what?"
"You're the Lord of the Flies, but you're at the mercy of Time. You don't know what's to happen in time."
"Well, if that's true, than half the time, you're no better than I because you don't know it, and they are nothing, those vermin down there, those you call your brothers and sisters, because they know nothing moment to moment. At least you have visions, and schemes."
He reached out for me as if he'd take hold of me, and his face was twisted with malevolence.
"What have you known of time these dreary years you've spent in Nazareth? What is time in which you grind your aching muscles to dust, all of you? Why do you bear it? Why does He bear it? You claim to know His Will. Tell me, why doesn't He shut it down?"
"Shut down Time?" I asked in a small voice. "The gift of Time?"
"The gift? It's a gift to be lost in this miserable world of His, lost to the pitiless ignorance of others, in Time?"
"Ah, you do know one thing and that is misery," I said.
"I? I know misery? What misery do they know, day in and day out, and what misery have you known with them? Do you think this life and time was a gift to that boy Yitra, whom your villagers stoned? You know he was innocent, don't you? Oh, he was tempted, but he was innocent. And the Orphan? That child didn't even know why he died. Do you know what was in their hearts when they saw the stones coming at them? What do you think is in the heart of Yitra's mother, where she weeps, at this very time?"
"I would ask you where hope comes from, if not out of time? I would ask you that and give you that answer, but you've made your decision, whole and complete and forever, and for you there is no time."
"I should throw you down from here!" he whispered. He held up his hands to clutch at me, but they didn't close on my throat. "I should smash you on those stones. I have no qualms about tempting the Lord your God. I never have."
He stepped back, too furious for a moment to speak. Then he took a breath.
"Maybe you are some phantasm, made up out of His impassable and merciless Mind. How else could you not feel for Avigail when she stood terrified among those children, awaiting the very same death the village had given Yitra and the Orphan? Do you have mercy on any of them anywhere ever?"
The light changed. Then the air began to move.
The entire vision of the Temple and its daily multitude shifted, crumpled, as if it were pictures painted on silk.
I was in the whirlwind, and I reached out.
Suddenly we were standing together, the beautifully garbed one and me, on the crest of a mountain, perhaps the highest mountain in the land. Only it was in no certain land.
Beneath us stretched what appeared to be a map but was no map - rather the patterns of mountains and rivers and valleys and oceans that made up the entire world.
"That's right," he said over the faint wind. "The world. You see it as I see it. Beautiful to behold."
He stood for a moment as though earnestly contemplating this majestic perspective, and indeed I did look out on what he claimed to reveal, and then I looked at him.
He was in profile, my profile, his dark hair blown back away from his cheekbones, and his eyes were softened as mine often were, and he held his mantle rather gracefully and easily at his sides.
"Do you really want to help them?" he asked me. He lifted his finger. "I say truly - do you want to help them? Truly? Or do you really mean to frighten them and leave them far for the worse that another prophet has come cursing and denouncing and proclaiming what will never come to pass?"
He turned to me and his eyes filled with tears. No doubt too very like the tears he'd seen me shed only a while before. He pressed his hands together before his face and then he looked up at me through this dramatic and glittering mist.
"You have indeed come amid signs and wonders," he said thoughtfully, as though the words were pulled out of a soul. "And these are remarkable times. There are Jews in every city of the Empire. The Scripture of your God is in Greek for them to read no matter where they live or what their schooling. The name of your nameless God is spoken perhaps in the farthest reaches of the north. Who knows? And you, a filthy carpenter, yes, but you are the Son of David and you are very clever and you do speak well."
"Thank you," I said.
"The Scriptures speak of one who'll lead them to independence and to triumph. And you know these Scriptures. You knew what it meant when you were a child - the words - Christ the Lord."
"I did," I said.
"You can help them. You can lead the armies. You can draw on all those far-flung cells of the devout waiting to come to your support. Why, there are Jews in Rome who would bring you and your army into the city; with you at the lead, they'd storm the Emperor's Palace, they'd put an end to every last man in the Senate, and the Praetorian Guard. Can you see this? Can you imagine what I'm trying to explain to you?"
"I do see it," I said. "But it won't happen."
"But don't you understand, I'm trying to make plain to you that it can! You can gather them all from the cities to which they've wandered; you can bring these out of the Holy Land like a great whirlwind that can sweep the coasts of the entire sea."