Behold the Man kg-1

by Michael John Moorcock

  Glogauer began to vomit into the water, stumbling as I John's hands gripped his arms painfully and guided him up the bank.

  A peculiar, rhythmic humming came from the mouths of the Essenes as they swayed; it rose as they swayed to one side, fell as they swayed to the other.

  Glogauer covered his ears as John released him. He was still retching, but it was dry now, and worse than before.

  He began to stagger away, barely keeping his balance, running, with his ears still covered; running over the rocky scrubland; running as the sun throbbed in the sky and its heat pounded at his head; running away.

  But John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and earnest thou to me? And Jesus answering said unto him. Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness. Then he suffered him. And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying. This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

  (Matthew 3:14-17)

  IV

  He had been fifteen, doing well at the grammar school.

  He had read in the newspapers about the Teddy Boy gangs that roamed South London, but the odd youth he had seen in pseudo-Edwardian clothes had seemed harmless and stupid enough.

  He had gone to the pictures in Brixton Hill and decided to walk home to Streatham because he had spent most of the bus money on an ice cream. They came out of the cinema at the same time. He hardly noticed them as they followed him down the hill.

  Then, quite suddenly, they had surrounded him. Pale, mean-faced boys, most of them a year or two older than he was. He realized that he knew two of them vaguely. They Were at the big council school in the same street as the grammar school. They used the same football ground.

  "Hello," he said weakly.

  "Hello, son," said the oldest Teddy Boy. He was chewing gum, standing with one knee bent, grinning at him. "Where you going, then?"

  "Home."

  "Heouwm," said the biggest one, imitating his accent.

  "What are you going to do when you get there?"

  "Go to bed." Karl tried to get through the ring, but they wouldn't let him. They pressed him back into a shop doorway. Beyond them, cars droned by on the main road. The street was brightly lit, with street lamps and neon from the shops. Several people passed, but none of them stopped.

  Karl began to feel panic.

  "Got no homework to do, son?" said the boy next to the leader. He was redheaded and freckled and his eyes were a hard gray.

  "Want to fight one of us?" another boy asked. It was one of the boys he knew.

  "No. I don't fight. Let me go."

  "You scared, son?" said the leader, grinning. Ostentatiously, he pulled a streamer of gum from his mouth and then replaced it. He began chewing again.

  "No. Why should I want to fight you?"

  "You reckon you're better than us, is that it, son?"

  "No." He was beginning to tremble. Tears were coming into his eyes. "'Course not."

  "'Course not, son." He moved forward again, but they pushed him back into the doorway.

  "You're the bloke with the kraut name, ain't you?" said the other boy he knew. "Glow-worm or some think."

  "Glogauer. Let me go."

  "Won't your mummy like it if you're back late?"

  "More a yid name than a kraut name."

  "You a yid, son?"

  "He looks like a yid."

  "You a yid, son?"

  "You a Jewish boy, son?"

  "You a yid, son?"

  "Shut up!" Karl screamed. He pushed into them. One of them punched him in the stomach. He grunted with pain.

  Another pushed him and he staggered.

  People were still hurrying by on the pavement. They glanced at the group as. they went past. One man stopped, but his wife pulled him on. "Just some kids larking about," she said.

  "Get his trousers down," one of the boys suggested with a laugh. "That'll prove it." Karl pushed through them and this time they didn't resist.

  He began to run down the hill.

  "Give him a start," he heard one of the boys say.

  He ran on.

  They began to follow him, laughing.

  They did not catch up with him by the time he turned into the avenue where he lived. He reached the house and ran along the dark passage beside it. He opened the back door. His stepmother was in the kitchen.

  "What's the matter with you?" she said.

  She was a tall, thin woman, nervous and hysterical. Her dark hair was untidy.

  He went past her into the breakfast-room.

  "What's the matter, Karl?" she called. Her voice was high-pitched.

  "Nothing," he said.

  He didn't want a scene.

  It was cold when he woke up. The false dawn was gray and he could see nothing but barren country in all directions.

  He could not remember a great deal about the previous day, except that he had run a long way.

  Dew had gathered on his loincloth. He wet his lips and rubbed the skin over his face. As he always did after a migraine attack he felt weak and completely drained. Looking down at his naked body, he noticed how skinny he had become. Life with the Essenes had caused that, of course.

  He wondered why he had panicked so much when John had asked him to baptize him. Was it simply honesty something in him which resisted deceiving the Essenes into thinking he was a prophet of some kind? It was hard to know.

  He wrapped the goatskin about his hips and tied it tightly just above his left thigh. He supposed he had better try to get back to the camp and find John and apologize, see if he could make amends.

  The time machine was there now, too. They had dragged it there, using only rawhide ropes.

  If a good blacksmith could be found, or some other metal-worker, there was just a chance that it could be repaired.

  The journey back would be dangerous.

  He wondered if he ought to go back right away, or try to shift to a time nearer to the actual crucifixion. He had not gone back specifically to witness the crucifixion, but to get the mood of Jerusalem during the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus was supposed to have entered the city. Monica had thought Jesus had stormed the city with an armed band.

  She had said that all the evidence pointed to that. All the evidence of one sort did point to it, but he could not accept the evidence. There was more to it, he was sure. If only he could meet Jesus. John had apparently never heard of him, though he had told Glogauer that there was a prophecy that the Messiah would be a Nazarene. There were many prophecies, and many of them conflicted.

  He began to walk back in the general direction of the Essenes camp. He could not have come so far. He would soon recognize the hills where they had their caves.

  Soon it was very hot and the ground more barren. The air wavered before his eyes. The feeling of exhaustion with which he had awakened increased. His mouth was dry and his legs were weak. He was hungry and there was nothing to eat. There was no sign of the range of hills where the Essenes had their camp.

  There was one hill, about two miles away to the south.

  He decided to make for it. From there he would probably be able to get his bearings, perhaps even see a township where they would give him food.

  The sandy soil turned to floating dust around him as his feet disturbed it. A few primitive shrubs clung to the ground and jutting rocks tripped him.

  He was bleeding and bruised by the time he began, painfully, to clamber up the hillside.

  The journey to the summit (which was much farther away than he had originally judged) was difficult. He would slide on the loose stones of the hillside, falling on his face, bracing his torn hands and feet to stop himself from sliding down to the bottom, clinging to tufts of grass and lichen that grew here and there, embracing larger projections of rock when he could, resting frequently, his mind and body both numb with p
ain and weariness.

  He sweated beneath the sun. The dust stuck to the moisture on his half-naked body, caking him from head to foot.

  The goatskin was in shreds.

  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 at 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 realize 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 ChristianityRabbinic 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, lust think what you could have been if you'd have come to terms with yourself...

  Glogauer pulled his mined 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 night, he was afterward anhungered.

  (Matthew 4:1-2)

  V

  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-storied houses of stone and clay-brick, built around a market place 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 wagons 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 traveler 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 ran 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 woolen 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 Sistance.

  When he reached the center of the market place, 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, his voice soft, the words carefully formed. "Is this Nazareth?"
r />   "It is." She nodded and increased her pace.

  A man was crossing the square. He was dressed in a woolen robe of red and brown stripes. There was a red skull cap 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-

  humored, patronizing.

  "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 gray hair and seemed short-sighted. He peered up at the madman.

  "What do you want?"

  "I seek .a carpenter called Joseph. He has a wifeMary." 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.