Christ the Lord - Anne Rice [67]
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.’ ”
“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