I looked at him intently. He resembled Apollonius more than ever.
“Father, do you not remember,—long, long ago,—I spoke to you of this? Do you remember?”
The Bishop squinted his eyes and rubbed his forehead several times. “I think… I remember… It seemed, indeed for a moment…that I had really met you before… Memory alas, is a sieve…”
We remained silent for a long time.
“But I beg you, tell me your marvelous experience under the seal of the confessional. Your words shall remain a secret for all time.”
He made the sign of the Cross.
“There are some things I should like the world to know, Father.”
“I shall divulge to the world any message with which you may charge me.”
I pressed his hand. “So be it! Look at me well, Father. What is my nationality or my race?”
The Bishop scrutinized me carefully. “You may be of any race or nationality. And you may be of any age…thirty, perhaps, or sixty. There is something unreal about you…or maybe it is only the reflection of the moon.”
He shivered a little, and recoiled slightly.
Then, collecting himself, he said: “Tell me your story. My lips will be sealed after you unlock your breast—even” he whispered, “if you are Anti-Christ.”
The sun had already risen, but I continued to relate my adventures. The Bishop, spellbound, listened motionless, fearing perhaps that it was all a dream, that he might suddenly awaken, and the story remain untold.
At last my tale was finished. The Bishop, his head bowed, meditated.
“Father, do you believe my story?”
He nodded.
“Is it not too extravagant to be true?”
“Before God all things are possible, my son.”
“Except my conversion to Jesus.”
He looked at me sadly. “You will never know the meaning of happiness if you are not willing to accept Jesus. You have sought happiness for twelve hundred years; your eyes have beheld marvelous things—yet, what have you gained except disillusion?”
“Disillusion and a sense of humor.”
“Deep in your heart, you are still seeking happiness. Disillusion and humor merely protect you from pain.”
“I can conceive of no happiness based on the denial of reason!”
“Reason is only an ornament; it is not life itself. The futility of your struggle against Jesus proves that the universe moves by something greater than reason.”
“Is it greater…or is it smaller? Divine Unreason, perhaps!”
The Bishop smiled. “Forgive me if I say that your obstinacy proves you are still a Jew.”
“A characteristic I share with the founder of your religion, Father. Life requires obstinacy. Man accomplished his growth from savagery by his unconquerable tenacity. Nature is a mountain of iron and rock. Man is a hammer!”
“Ah…if Jesus could persuade you through me! What glory and power you would bring His Kingdom!”
“Who knows, Father? Perhaps he lives only because I am his enemy…”
“He lives because He is.”
“And I…?”
“Because He wills it.”
“He also willed that I suffer always, that I consider life an endless torment…and yet…”
“How do you know what He really willed? The love of Jesus is infinite…”
“His love was not infinite, Father.”
“His hand heals, even when it seems to smite.”
“It is not true, Father. Jesus hated. Jesus was irascible…”
“What do you say, my son?”
“The Council of Nicaea rejected several authentic narratives of the gospel…”
“Those that were of divine origin rose from the altar, as if possessing wings. The others dropped to the earth,” the Bishop interjected.
I smiled. “I was present. What you say never occurred. The fathers wrangled and fought. I never saw a more obstinate and self-willed gathering. A militant minority, backed by Emperor Constantine, imposed its will upon the Council. Finally, they compromised upon the Bible, as the Christian world knows it, but the books of Thomas and the gospel of the Infancy of Jesus were rejected, for they related things unpalatable to your theology…”
“What things, my son?”
“The cruelty of Jesus…”
“Impossible!” the Bishop exclaimed.
“You forget,” I remarked, “that I knew Jesus as a boy. I knew his tantrums as a child. I knew him when he was an apprentice in his father’s shop. I remember how, on one occasion, my father commissioned him to do a job for him. The work was not satisfactory. When my father pointed out certain flaws to him, young Jesus flew into a rage and smashed his own handiwork. If a god adopts a trade he should master it more completely.”
“My son,” the Bishop remarked, shaking his locks, “your hatred envenoms your tongue. You draw upon memories embittered by your own bias.”
“If you will not accept my testimony, I can cite the evidence of your own sacred books. I shall draw upon sources regarded as sacred by the Fathers of the Church.
“His cruelty even as a boy became so frequent and so intolerable, according to the testimony of Saint Thomas and other witnesses, that Joseph, his father, said in despair to Saint Mary: ‘Thenceforth we will not allow him out of the house; for everyone who displeases him is killed.’ ”
“That was a metaphor, my son,” the Bishop smiled.
“No, Father! It was literal. Listen to a few incidents.”
“Go on, my son.”
“The son of Hanani, disturbing the waters of a fish pool, Jesus commanded the water to vanish, saying:—’In like manner as this water has vanished, so shall thy life vanish.’ And presently the boy died.
“Another time when the Lord Jesus was coming home in the evening with Joseph, He met a boy, who ran so hard against Him, that he threw Him down; to whom the Lord Jesus said, ‘As thou hast thrown me down, so shalt thou fall, nor ever rise.’ At that moment the boy died.
“Another time Jesus went forth into the street, and a boy running, rushed by His shoulder; at which Jesus being angry, said to him, ‘Thou shalt go no farther.’ And he instantly fell over dead. The parents of the dead boy, going to Joseph, complained, saying, ‘You are not fit to live with us, in our city, having such a boy as that. Either teach him that he bless and not curse, or else depart thou hence with him, for he kills our children.’
“Then Joseph, calling the boy Jesus by himself, instructed him, saying, ‘Why dost thou such things to injure the people so, that they hate and persecute us?’
“But Jesus replied, ‘They who have said these things to thee shall suffer everlasting punishment.’ And immediately they who had accused him became blind.”
I remained silent. The Bishop knit his brows, and meditated.
“It is merely a legend, the invention of some poet who liked cruel things. Your testimony is spurious. Jesus was as gentle as a lamb. Even as a child He was obedient and wise…”
“That is also mere poetry, Father,” I smiled a little cynically, piqued at the fact that he did not believe me. “Jesus snubbed his brothers. He neglected his family. He denied all family ties. He asked those who followed him to leave their fathers and mothers, their kith and their kin. I do not blame him for upbraiding his Father in Heaven on the cross. Yet why should he be surprised if his Father in Heaven forsook him, since he himself forsook his father and mother on earth? Only an unnatural son would deny his own mother with the cold insolence of Jesus. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ is not a quotation from the Apocrypha. It is part of the gospel, the gospel which, you claim, rose miraculously from the altar. He withered the lives of little children with the same petulance with which he blasted the innocent fig tree.”
“My son, if what you relate were really true, would it not prove that He was omnipotent from His Mother’s womb?” the Bishop exclaimed triumphantly. “He had a God’s work to do even in His infancy.”