The Best of Michael Moorcock

by Michael Moorcock

  The barren world reeled around him, sky somehow merging with land, yellow rock with white clouds. Nothing seemed still.

  He reached the summit and lay there gasping. Everything had become unreal.

  He heard Monica’s voice, thought he glanced her for a moment from the corner of his eye.

  Don’t be melodramatic, Karl . . .

  She had said that many times. His own voice replied now.

  I’m born out of my time, Monica. This age of reason has no place for me. It will kill me in the end.

  Her voice replied.

  Guilt and fear and your own masochism. You could be a brilliant psychiatrist, but you’ve given in to all your own neuroses so completely . . .

  “Shut up!”

  He rolled over on his back. The sun blazed down on his tattered body.

  “Shut up!”

  The whole Christian syndrome, Karl. You’ll become a Catholic convert next, I shouldn’t doubt. Where’s your strength of mind?

  “Shut up! Go away, Monica.”

  Fear shapes your thoughts. You’re not searching for a soul or even a meaning for life. You’re searching for comforts.

  “Leave me alone, Monica!”

  His grimy hands covered his ears. His hair and beard were matted with dust. Blood had congealed on the minor wounds that were now on every part of his body. Above, the sun seemed to pound in unison with his heartbeats.

  You’re going downhill, Karl, don’t you realise that? Downhill. Pull yourself together. You’re not entirely incapable of rational thought . . .

  “Oh, Monica! Shut up!”

  His voice was harsh and cracked. A few ravens circled the sky above him now. He heard them calling back at him in a voice not unlike his own.

  God died in 1945 . . .

  “It isn’t 1945—it’s 28 A.D. God is alive!”

  How you can bother to wonder about an obvious syncretistic religion like Christianity—Rabbinic Judaism, Stoic ethics, Greek mystery cults. Oriental ritual . . .

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  Not to you in your present state of mind.

  “I need God!”

  That’s what it boils down to, doesn’t it? Okay, Karl, carve your own crutches. Just think what you could have been if you’ d have come to terms with yourself . . .

  Glogauer pulled his ruined body to its feet and stood on the summit of the hill and screamed.

  The ravens were startled. They wheeled in the sky and flew away.

  The sky was darkening now.

  Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungered.

  (Matthew 4: 1–2)

  4

  The madman came stumbling into the town. His feet stirred the dust and made it dance and dogs barked around him as he walked mechanically, his head turned upwards to face the sun, his arms limp at his sides, his lips moving.

  To the townspeople, the words they heard were in no familiar language; yet they were uttered with such intensity and conviction that God himself might be using this emaciated, naked creature as his spokesman.

  They wondered where the madman had come from.

  The white town consisted primarily of double-and single-storeyed houses of stone and clay-brick, built around a marketplace that was fronted by an ancient, simple synagogue outside which old men sat and talked, dressed in dark robes. The town was prosperous and clean, thriving on Roman commerce. Only one or two beggars were in the streets and these were well-fed. The streets followed the rise and fall of the hillside on which they were built. They were winding streets, shady and peaceful; country streets. There was a smell of newly cut timber everywhere in the air, and the sound of carpentry, for the town was chiefly famous for its skilled carpenters. It lay on the edge of the Plain of Jezreel, close to the trade route between Damascus and Egypt, and waggons were always leaving it, laden with the work of the town’s craftsmen. The town was called Nazareth.

  The madman had found it by asking every traveller he saw where it was. He had passed through other towns—Philadelphia, Gerasa, Pella and Scythopolis, following the Roman roads—asking the same question in his outlandish accent. “Where lies Nazareth?”

  Some had given him food on the way. Some had asked for his blessing and he had laid hands on them, speaking in that strange tongue. Some had pelted him with stones and driven him away.

  He had crossed the Jordan by the Roman viaduct and continued northwards towards Nazareth.

  There had been no difficulty in finding the town, but it had been difficult for him to force himself towards it. He had lost a great deal of blood and had eaten very little on the journey. He would walk until he collapsed and lie there until he could go on, or, as had happened increasingly, until someone found him and had given him a little sour wine or bread to revive him.

  Once some Roman legionaries had stopped and with brusque kindness asked him if he had any relatives they could take him to. They had addressed him in pidgin-Aramaic and had been surprised when he replied in a strangely accented Latin that was purer than the language they spoke themselves.

  They asked him if he was a rabbi or a scholar. He told them he was neither. The officer of the legionaries had offered him some dried meat and wine. The men were part of a patrol that passed this way once a month. They were stocky, brown-faced men, with hard, clean-shaven faces. They were dressed in stained leather kilts and breastplates and sandals, and had iron helmets on their heads, scabbarded short swords at their hips. Even as they stood around him in the evening sunlight they did not seem relaxed. The officer, softer-voiced than his men but otherwise much like them save that he wore a metal breastplate and a long cloak, asked the madman what his name was.

  For a moment the madman had paused, his mouth opening and closing, as if he could not remember what he was called.

  “Karl,” he said at length, doubtfully. It was more a suggestion than a statement.

  “Sounds almost like a Roman name,” said one of the legionaries.

  “Are you a citizen?” the officer asked.

  But the madman’s mind was wandering, evidently. He looked away from them, muttering to himself.

  All at once, he looked back at them and said: “Nazareth?”

  “That way.” The officer pointed down the road that cut between the hills. “Are you a Jew?”

  This seemed to startle the madman. He sprang to his feet and tried to push through the soldiers. They let him through, laughing. He was a harmless madman.

  They watched him run down the road.

  “One of their prophets, perhaps,” said the officer, walking towards his horse. The country was full of them. Every other man you met claimed to be spreading the message of their god. They didn’t make much trouble and religion seemed to keep their minds off rebellion. We should be grateful, thought the officer.

  His men were still laughing.

  They began to march down the road in the opposite direction to the one the madman had taken.

  Now the madman was in Nazareth and the townspeople looked at him with curiosity and more than a little suspicion as he staggered into the market square. He could be a wandering prophet or he could be possessed by devils. It was often hard to tell. The rabbis would know.

  As he passed the knots of people standing by the merchants’ stalls, they fell silent until he had gone by. Women pulled their heavy woollen shawls about their well-fed bodies and men tucked in their cotton robes so that he would not touch them. Normally their instinct would have been to have taxed him with his business in the town, but there was an intensity about his gaze, a quickness and vitality about his face, in spite of his emaciated appearance, that made them treat him with some respect and they kept their distance.

  When he reached the centre of the marketplace, he stopped and looked around him. He seemed slow to notice the people. He blinked and licked his lips.

  A woman passed, eyeing him warily. He spoke to her, hi
s voice soft, the words carefully formed. “Is this Nazareth?”

  “It is.” She nodded and increased her pace.

  A man was crossing the square. He was dressed in a woollen robe of red-and-brown stripes. There was a red skullcap on his curly, black hair. His face was plump and cheerful. The madman walked across the man’s path and stopped him. “I seek a carpenter.”

  “There are many carpenters in Nazareth. The town is famous for its carpenters. I am a carpenter myself. Can I help you?” The man’s voice was good-humoured, patronising.

  “Do you know a carpenter called Joseph? A descendant of David. He has a wife called Mary and several children. One is named Jesus.”

  The cheerful man screwed his face into a mock frown and scratched the back of his neck. “I know more than one Joseph. There is one poor fellow in yonder street.” He pointed. “He has a wife called Mary. Try there. You should soon find him. Look for a man who never laughs.”

  The madman looked in the direction in which the man pointed. As soon as he saw the street, he seemed to forget everything else and strode towards it.

  In the narrow street he entered, the smell of cut timber was even stronger. He walked ankle-deep in wood-shavings. From every building came the thud of hammers, the scrape of saws. There were planks of all sizes resting against the pale, shaded walls of the houses and there was hardly room to pass between them. Many of the carpenters had their benches just outside their doors. They were carving bowls, operating simple lathes, shaping wood into everything imaginable. They looked up as the madman entered the street and approached one old carpenter in a leather apron who sat at his bench carving a figurine. The man had grey hair and seemed short-sighted. He peered up at the madman.

  “What do you want?”

  “I seek a carpenter called Joseph. He has a wife—Mary.”

  The old man gestured with his hand that held the half-completed figurine.

  “Two houses along on the other side of the street.”

  The house the madman came to had very few planks leaning against it, and the quality of the timber seemed poorer than the other wood he had seen. The bench near the entrance was warped on one side and the man who sat hunched over it repairing a stool seemed misshapen also. He straightened up as the madman touched his shoulder. His face was lined and pouched with misery. His eyes were tired and his thin beard had premature streaks of grey. He coughed slightly, perhaps in surprise at being disturbed.

  “Are you Joseph?” asked the madman.

  “I’ve no money.”

  “I want nothing—just to ask a few questions.”

  “I’m Joseph. Why do you want to know?”

  “Have you a son?”

  “Several, and daughters, too.”

  “Your wife is called Mary? You are of David’s line.”

  The man waved his hand impatiently. “Yes, for what good either has done me . . .”

  “I wish to meet one of your sons. Jesus. Can you tell me where he is?”

  “That good-for-nothing. What has he done now?”

  “Where is he?”

  Joseph’s eyes became more calculating as he stared at the madman. “Are you a seer of some kind? Have you come to cure my son?”

  “I am a prophet of sorts. I can foretell the future.”

  Joseph got up with a sigh. “You can see him. Come.” He led the madman through the gateway into the cramped courtyard of the house. It was crowded with pieces of wood, broken furniture and implements, rotting sacks of shavings. They entered the darkened house. In the first room—evidently a kitchen—a woman stood by a large clay stove. She was tall and bulging with fat. Her long, black hair was unbound and greasy, falling over large, lustrous eyes that still had the heat of sensuality. She looked the madman over.

  “There’s no food for beggars,” she grunted. “He eats enough as it is.” She gestured with a wooden spoon at a small figure sitting in the shadow of a corner. The figure shifted as she spoke.

  “He seeks our Jesus,” said Joseph to the woman. “Perhaps he comes to ease our burden.”

  The woman gave the madman a sidelong look and shrugged. She licked her red lips with a fat tongue. “Jesus!”

  The figure in the corner stood up.

  “That’s him,” said the woman with a certain satisfaction.

  The madman frowned, shaking his head rapidly. “No.”

  The figure was misshapen. It had a pronounced hunched back and a cast in its left eye. The face was vacant and foolish. There was a little spittle on the lips. It giggled as its name was repeated. It took a crooked step forward. “Jesus,” it said. The word was slurred and thick. “Jesus.”

  “That’s all he can say.” The woman sneered. “He’s always been like that.”

  “God’s judgement,” said Joseph bitterly.

  “What is wrong with him?” There was a pathetic, desperate note in the madman’s voice.

  “He’s always been like that.” The woman turned back to the stove. “You can have him if you want him. Addled inside and outside. I was carrying him when my parents married me off to that half-man . . .”

  “You shameless—” Joseph stopped as his wife glared at him. He turned to the madman. “What’s your business with our son?”

  “I wished to talk to him. I . . .”

  “He’s no oracle—no seer—we used to think he might be. There are still people in Nazareth who come to him to cure them or tell their fortunes, but he only giggles at them and speaks his name over and over again . . .”

  “Are—you sure—there is not—something about him—you have not noticed?”

  “Sure!” Mary snorted sardonically. “We need money badly enough. If he had any magical powers, we’d know.”

  Jesus giggled again and limped away into another room.

  “It is impossible,” the madman murmured. Could history itself have changed? Could he be in some other dimension of time where Christ had never been?

  Joseph appeared to notice the look of agony in the madman’s eyes.

  “What is it?” he said. “What do you see? You said you foretold the future. Tell us how we will fare?”

  “Not now,” said the prophet, turning away. “Not now.”

  He ran from the house and down the street with its smell of planed oak, cedar and cypress. He ran back to the marketplace and stopped, looking wildly about him. He saw the synagogue directly ahead of him. He began to walk towards it.

  The man he had spoken to earlier was still in the marketplace, buying cooking pots to give to his daughter as a wedding gift. He nodded towards the strange man as he entered the synagogue. “He’s a relative of Joseph the carpenter,” he told the man beside him. “A prophet, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  The madman, the prophet, Karl Glogauer, the time-traveller, the neurotic psychiatrist manqué, the searcher for meaning, the masochist, the man with a death-wish and the messiah-complex, the anachronism, made his way into the synagogue gasping for breath. He had seen the man he had sought. He had seen Jesus, the son of Joseph and Mary. He had seen a man he recognised without any doubt as a congenital imbecile.

  “All men have a messiah-complex, Karl,” Monica had said.

  The memories were less complete now. His sense of time and identity was becoming confused.

  “There were dozens of messiahs in Galilee at the time. That Jesus should have been the one to carry the myth and the philosophy was a coincidence of history . . .”

  “There must have been more to it than that, Monica.”

  Every Tuesday in the room above the Occult Bookshop, the Jungian discussion group would meet for purposes of group analysis and therapy. Glogauer had not organised the group, but he had willingly lent his premises to it and had joined it eagerly. It was a great relief to talk with like-minded people once a week. One of his reasons for buying the Occult Bookshop was so that he would meet interesting people like those who attended the Jungian discussion group.

  An obsession with Jung brought them together, but everyone
had special obsessions of their own. Mrs. Rita Blenn charted the courses of flying saucers, though it was not clear if she believed in them or not. Hugh Joyce believed that all Jungian archetypes derived from the original race of Atlanteans who had perished millennia before. Alan Cheddar, the youngest of the group, was interested in Indian mysticism, and Sandra Peterson, the organiser, was a great witchcraft specialist. James Headington was interested in time. He was the group’s pride; he was Sir James Headington, wartime inventor, very rich and with all sorts of decorations for his contribution to the Allied victory. He had had the reputation of being a great improviser during the War, but after it he had become something of an embarrassment to the War Office. He was a crank, they thought, and what was worse, he aired his crankiness in public.

  Every so often, Sir James would tell the other members of the group about his time machine. They humoured him. Most of them were liable to exaggerate their own experiences connected with their different interests.

  One Tuesday evening, after everyone else had left, Headington told Glogauer that his machine was ready.

  “I can’t believe it,” Glogauer said truthfully.

  “You’re the first person I’ve told.”

  “Why me?”

  “I don’t know. I like you—and the shop.”

  “You haven’t told the government.”

  Headington had chuckled. “Why should I? Not until I’ve tested it fully, anyway. Serves them right for putting me out to pasture.”

  “You don’t know it works?”

  “I’m sure it does. Would you like to see it?”

  “A time machine.” Glogauer smiled weakly.

  “Come and see it.”

  “Why me?”

  “I thought you might be interested. I know you don’t hold with the orthodox view of science . . .”

  Glogauer felt sorry for him.

  “Come and see,” said Headington.

  He went out to Banbury the next day. The same day he left 1976 and arrived in 28 A.D.

  The synagogue was cool and quiet with a subtle scent of incense. The rabbis guided him into the courtyard. They, like the townspeople, did not know what to make of him, but they were sure it was not a devil that possessed him. It was their custom to give shelter to the roaming prophets who were now everywhere in Galilee, though this one was stranger than the rest. His face was immobile and his body was stiff, and there were tears running down his dirty cheeks. They had never seen such agony in a man’s eyes before.