The Gospel According to the Son

by Norman Mailer

  12

  At the summit, the rocks stood about like tombs, and the steps between were treacherous. It was midday. The heat of the sun was on me.

  I sat in the shadow of a great stone and looked out on the lands of Israel, upon Galilee to the north and Judea to the south. The haze had a golden hue, and I wondered whether one could even see the spires of gold that rose above the hills of the holy city. But I did not think long on Jerusalem; living without food for a day, I was hungry.

  Yet I also knew why the Lord had sent me to the summit of this mountain. For it was not enough to be His son and cousin to John the Baptist. I had to pass through trials, and the first test must be not to eat. Even as I said to myself, "I will take no food until sundown," the Lord replied.

  I did not see Him, nor did I feel His presence other than His voice (which was in my ear), but He said: "You will fast until I tell you to eat."

  So I was without food for that day and the next. And by the fifth day, when the pangs of my stomach had given way to a solemn emptiness of spirit, I felt weak and no longer knew if I had the strength to climb down from this mountain. So I said aloud, "How long, O Lord?" and He replied, "Long. It will be long."

  Since I was not there to dispute Him but to follow His will, fasting grew easier. I shielded myself from the sun and came to love the taste of water and the wisdom that is found in the shade of large rocks (until they grow too cold at night for any wisdom). And the air of night was cold. No plants grew on the summit of this mountain. Which was just as well. For there were hours when I could have chewed on their thorns.

  In the second week, I had visions of King David and knew that he had committed a great sin. I could not recall the offense, but I did remember that he had been punished, and on his death the Lord had appeared to the son of David, King Solomon, and asked: "What shall I give thee?"

  And Solomon replied: "O Lord my God, I know not how to go out nor to come in, and Thy servant is in the midst of Thy people, a great people that cannot be numbered nor counted. Give therefore Thy servant an understanding heart that I may discern between good and bad."

  And I recalled how this speech had so pleased the Lord that He said to Solomon: "Because thou hast not asked for a long life nor for riches nor begged for the death of thine enemies but asked for discernment in judgment, then, behold, I have given thee a wise and understanding heart."

  And God gave Solomon all that he had not asked for, both riches and honors, until there were no kings as great as Solomon in those days.

  But now the voice of the Lord was saying to me: "Solomon did not keep My Commandments. Solomon spoke three thousand proverbs, and his songs were a thousand and five. All people came to hear the wisdom of Solomon, in that he exceeded all the kings of the earth. And these kings brought him silver, ivory, apes, and pea-cocks. But," said the Lord to my ear, "King Solomon loved many strange women: the daughter of Pharaoh and the women of the Moabites, the Ammonites, the Edomites, the Sedonians, and the Hittites, whereas I had said unto the children of Israel, 'Ye shall not go in to them. For surely they will turn your heart toward their gods.' But Solomon had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and when Solomon was old, his heart was not perfect with Me. I had given him too many gifts. So," said the Lord, "I will not give you riches. And you will never tarry with a woman, or you shall lose the Lord."

  He had given me Solomon's sins on which to meditate, and that was an advantage not given to Solomon. I, being without food, had no desire for a woman, nor did I feel at odds with the Lord's decision. My fast continued.

  The prophets were often with me in these weeks: Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Daniel and Ezekiel. I could recall their words as if they were my own. Before long, I had a dream that made me one with the prophet Elijah, and in this dream I had contests with the prophets of Baal. More than forty such pagan prophets had come to my mountain to sacrifice a bullock, but first they destroyed the Lord's altar on the summit. Then they lacerated themselves with knives to show their devotion to Baal. Blood spurted from the wounds of these prophets and they cried aloud, yet the god Baal could not speak.

  Seeing that Baal was silent in my presence, I put twelve large stones on end, to stand for the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel, after which I restored the altar of the Lord. Then I dug a trench around the stones and put wood on the altar and cut the bullock into pieces, laying the raw flesh upon the wood. And then I poured four barrels of water on the sacrifice until this water ran into the trench.

  And the fire of the Lord blazed through the meat of the bullock and the sopping wood and the wet stones and licked up all the water that was in the trench. And I beheaded these forty prophets of Baal with a sword, and only then did I awake.

  Now it came to me that I was not Elijah but only dreaming of the scroll of Elijah, and the dream had been there to tell me that my fast must continue for forty days and forty nights. For if I did not change my ways or the people of Israel did not change theirs, then all of us were in danger of God's final judgment.

  So could I also see how my youth had passed with more thought given to the wood under my tools than to my people. Nor had I listened when Joseph would say: "All share in the sinfulness of Israel because we do not work hard enough to overcome it."

  I was yet to learn that I would care about sinners more than for the pious, but now I was content to quote the words of Isaiah to myself: "Though Thy people Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant shall return." And there, near to the sixth week of my fast, full of the spirit of Isaiah, I hoped that with the aid of this remnant of good Jews I might recover all that had been lost in the nation. So I would repeat the sayings of Isaiah aloud, speaking even into the eye of the sun until my eyes burned and I was obliged to return to the shade. I pondered the prayers I would use with sinners and decided that I would tell them, even as had Isaiah: " 'Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings; relieve the oppressed.' "

  And it was the fortieth day. As evening came, the Lord said to me, "Tomorrow you may step down from the mountain and take food." Hunger came back to me on these words, and I was ravenous.

  Yet even as I was thinking of what I would eat, the Lord said, "Tonight, remain on the mountain. A visitor will come."

  13

  The visitor soon arrived. And he was as handsome as a prince. He had a gold ornament on a gold chain about his neck, and in this ornament was the face of a ram, bestial yet more noble than any ram I had ever seen. And the hair of this prince was as long as my own and lustrous. He was dressed in robes of velvet that were as purple as the late evening, and he wore a crown as golden as the sun. He had climbed the mountain, yet there was no dust on his robes nor sweat upon his skin. He could be no other than who I thought, and indeed he soon introduced himself. I said to myself, "The Devil is the most beautiful creature God ever made."

  His first words were: "Do you know how the prophet Isaiah met his death?"

  I was overcome with silence. So I was obliged to listen as he said: "Isaiah was killed by a Jewish king, the pagan Manasseh, cohort of Amon. A bad Jew." The Devil nodded as if he were a good Jew (which I was certain he was not!). Then he held up one finger and spoke again: "This Manasseh, wishing to destroy the religion of his fathers, sent out a royal order that Isaiah was to be uprooted from his home in the city and hunted like an animal. Hearing of this, Isaiah fled, and the soldiers of Manasseh set out after him into the wilderness. There, the prophet looked for a tree with a hollow large enough for a man to stand inside. This sanctuary," said the Devil, "he found in a stout oak with a rotten center, and he placed himself inside it. But the officers of Manasseh discovered where he was hiding and brought a great saw to the tree and cut it in half. Isaiah went screaming into his death. Did you know?" asked the Devil.

  "Not of such a death did I hear."

  Whereupon he laughed. I felt weakened by this story more than by any deprivation of the fast.

  He, however, was not about to cease speaking. "The manner in
which Isaiah met his death need not give you large concern," he said, "since you are not a prophet but indeed the Son! To my recollection, which is not small, the Lord has never performed an act of this kind before.

  Indeed, to look upon you is to give me much to contemplate. For you seem innocent of all that I know."

  He looked at me fondly. His eyes were black marble, but there were lights within. He said, "Are you hungry? Are you in need of drink?" And he brought forth a jug of wine and a leg of lamb, well cooked, which I had not seen beneath his robes until he produced them. And now he approached me so closely that my nostrils took in the spirit of the wine and the gravies of the lamb, even the smell of the Devil himself, which penetrated a small cloud of perfume rising from the folds of his robe. I could also perceive how greed came forth from his body. For that was kin to the odor that lives between the buttocks. Therefore I refused his food, but still, the other odors of his body entered my appetite like the savory that comes from an oven when food is roasting. And he, seeing such deliberation, smiled once more and said, "But of course you have no need of food. Being the Son of God, you can as easily command these stones to be bread. Which is proper food for an Essene. However, your garment is neither clean nor free of dust. Indeed, that you are the Son of God surprises me. Why did your Father choose you? Say to Him when next you converse that I salute Him. For do you know? Your Father and I have had much traffic and considerable dispute, and so We are always eager to obtain word of the Other and His doings. Indeed, on those occasions when We meet, I tell Him that men and women are the crown of all He has conceived among the animals and the plants of the field but that it is I, not He, who has a better understanding of this Creation. For His work has given issue to many small creatures and spirits that He hardly knows as well as I do. Of course, I was once His servant, His most trusted servant. Contemplate, then, how well I understand Him."

  I was amazed. He did not inspire fear but comfort. Now I knew how it might feel to be a sinner in a low tavern drinking wine. The labors of this long fast were gone; I felt balm come to my limbs. I could talk to the Devil; he was comfortable. If his odor could leave me uneasy, it also offered sympathy to desires I had not yet allowed myself to feel.

  Yet if I would allow him much, still I could not agree that God, the Lord of the Universe, did not understand His Creation better than my visitor. "It is not possible," I exclaimed. "He is all-powerful. The heavens and the earth, the stars and the sun, bow before Him. They do not bow to you."

  For one moment, Satan snorted like a horse. Was he unwilling to accept the bridle?

  "Your Father," said the Devil, "is but one god among many. You might take account of the myriad respected by the Romans. Are we to give no homage to the great will of the Romans? Why, your Father does not even have the power to command His own Jews in their own land even though so many see Him as the only One. You would do better to consider the breadth of His rages; they are unseemly for a great god. They are swollen and without proportion. He issues too many threats. He cannot bear anyone who would dispute Him. Whereas I confide to you that a hint of disobedience and a whiff of treachery are among the joys of life, and are to be ranked with its spoils rather than its evils."

  "That is not so," I was able to answer. "My Father is God, and of many dimensions, and of all dimensions." But my words tasted like straw.

  The Devil replied, "He is not in command of Himself!"

  14

  Nor did the Devil show any fear at what he had said. He continued to speak. "Your Father," he said, "does not have the right to demand complete obedience from His people. He does not comprehend that women are creatures different from men and live with separate understanding. Indeed, your Father has no inkling of women; His scorn for them is shared by His prophets, who speak, so they claim, with His voice. And they do! For rarely will He reprimand them! Look at Isaiah! Tell me that Isaiah does not live in your Father's heart when he says: 'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, therefore the Lord will smite with a scabbard the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts.' Their secret parts," repeated the Devil. And he continued to speak with the words of Isaiah: " 'The Lord will take away their bracelets and bonnets, the ornaments of the legs, the earrings, the rings and the nose-jewels, the fine linen, the hoods and the veils. And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell there shall be stink; and instead of a girdle, a rent; for lovely hair, there shall be baldness, and burning instead of beauty.'"

  "My Father was speaking of the nation of Zion," I said. "So were we taught."

  "No," replied the Devil. "He pretends to speak of the nation of Zion. But it is women He belittles. His mighty curses He saves for the men. When He wishes to address the nation of Israel, He is speaking only to men: 'The indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and His fury upon all their armies: He hath utterly destroyed them, He hath delivered them to the slaughter. Their offal shall come up out of their carcasses and the mountains shall be melted with their blood.' What a rage! His failures burn in His heart! Can He suspect that He may not be all-powerful? No! He does not have enough spirit to say: 'Yes, I have lost, but my soldiers were honest and fought well.' No, He is vengeful. 'The palaces will be forsaken,' says Isaiah, 'the forts and towers shall be dens forever, until the Spirit be poured upon us from on High.'

  "But when," asked the Devil, "will the Spirit be poured upon us? Your Father would send you forth to improve the hearts of men when His own heart is caked with the blood of those He has slaughtered. His love of all He has created is choked by His curses. His rages may be mighty, but they do not satisfy His desire. His language reveals how much He adores the grandeur He pretends to despise.

  "Tell me that your Father is not filled with an adoration of women. Which He hides from Himself! For He hates their power to entice Him. Ezekiel knows what is in your Father's heart. After all, he heard these words from the Lord: 'I swore unto thee and entered into a covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine. I washed thee with water; yea, I thoroughly washed away thy blood, and I anointed thee with oil. I clothed thee also in broidered work, and fine linen, and I covered thee with silk, with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon thy hands and a chain on thy neck, and earrings in thine ears, and a beautiful crown upon thine head. Thou wast decked with gold and silver; thou didst eat fine bread, and honey, and oil: and thou wast exceedingly beautiful, and thou didst prosper into a kingdom. And thy renown went forth among the heathen for thy beauty which I had put upon thee.' Now," said the Devil, "hear how He complains! He is pitiful in His complaints: 'But thou didst trust in thine own beauty, and played the harlot because of thy renown, and poured out thy fornications on everyone that passed by, and multiplied thy whoredoms. Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians, thy neighbors, great of flesh; and hast played the whore also with the Assyrians because thou wast insatiable.

  " 'Wherefore, O harlot, because thy filthiness was poured out, and thy nakedness discovered, therefore I will gather all thy lovers with whom thou hast taken pleasure; and will gather them round about against thee, and give thee into their hand, and they shall throw down thine eminent place, and shall strip thee of thy clothes, and shall take thy fair jewels and leave thee naked and bare, and they shall stone thee, and thrust thee through with their swords. And they shall burn thy houses with fire, and execute judgments upon thee in the sight of many women: and I will cause thee to cease from playing the harlot.'

  "Does all this take place," asked the Devil, "in order to scorn Jerusalem? Say rather that your Father's language reeks of desire."

  "Your words are pollutions." I hoped to excite enough anger in myself to reply, but I could only repeat: "Your words are poisonous."

  Satan replied: "Your Father's tongue is as ripe with lust as my own."

  I knew confusion. Could I deny that my loins had quickened as I listened to the repetition of my Father's words
?

  Now the Devil said: "You believe that you are sitting on the summit of this mountain, but we are no longer there. We have risen to a place above the holy places."

  His embrace of my vision was complete. Now I saw the city of Jerusalem, and it was beneath us. For we were no longer seated on the mountain. We were on the highest dome of the Great Temple in Jerusalem.

  I felt vertigo.

  At that moment the Devil said to me, "Because you are the Son of God, you can feel free to leap! Cast yourself out. Your Fathers angels will carry you."

  I felt a temptation to jump. But, most suddenly, I did not feel as if I were the Son of God. Not yet!

  An abyss was below me. And I knew it would be there for all the generations to come. Whenever they stood on a height, they would live in the wind of that unruly spirit who dwells in our breath and has a terror of the leap. Now the Devil looked at me again with his dark eyes, and the points of light within were like a night of stars; those eyes would promise glory. "If you stay with your Father you will labor for Him," he said. "You will be consumed. Jump! You can save yourself. Jump!"

  I would be smashed. But would my extinction be brief? And my return to the living as quick? The Devil had taken me into him. By the light in his dark eyes, I knew his speech even though he said nothing. If I jumped, the Devil would possess me. I would have leaped to my death at his bidding.

  But at this moment he said aloud, "You will be reborn. In secret. God will not know. I have the power to distract."