Among the crowd in the square in front of the synagogue was Joseph, who happened to be passing and had stopped to listen. He did not pay much attention to the descriptive details of the funeral procession, and lost interest when the poet began to strike an elegiac note, for grim experience had made the carpenter wise about that particular chord on the harp. One had only to look at him, his composure when he concealed his youth by becoming solemn and thoughtful, the bitterness that marked him with lines deeper than scars. But what is really disturbing about Joseph's face are the eyes, which are dull and expressionless except for a tiny flicker caused by insomnia. It is true that Joseph gets little sleep. Sleep is the enemy he confronts each night, as if fighting for his very life, and it is a battle he invariably loses, for even when he seems to be winning and falls asleep from sheer exhaustion, he no sooner closes his eyes than he sees a detachment of soldiers appearing on the road, with Joseph himself riding in their midst, sometimes brandishing a sword above his head, and it is just at that moment, when terror overwhelms him, that the leader of the expedition asks, Where do you think you're going, carpenter. And the poor man, who would rather not say, resists with all his might, but the malignant spirits in the dream are too strong for him, and they prise open his mouth with hands of steel, reducing him to tears and despair as he confesses, I'm on my way to Bethlehem to kill my son. We won't ask Joseph if he remembers how many oxen pulled the carriage bearing Herod's corpse or whether they were white or dappled. As he heads for home, all he can think of are the closing phrases of the muleteer's tale, when the man described the multitude accompanying the procession, slaves, soldiers, royal guards, professional mourners, musicians, governors, princes, future kings, and all the rest of us, whoever we might be, doing nothing else in life but searching for the place where we will stay forever. If only it were so, mused Joseph, with the bitterness of one who has given up all hope. If only it were so, he repeated to himself, thinking of all those who never left their place of birth yet death went there to find them, which only proves that fate is the only real certainty. It is so easy, dear God, we need only wait for everything in life to be fulfilled to say, It was fate. Herod was fated to die in Jericho and be borne on a carriage to the fortress of Herodium, but death exempted the infants of Bethlehem from having to travel anywhere. And Joseph's journey, which in the beginning seemed part of some divine plan to save those holy innocents, turned out to be futile. The carpenter listened and said nothing, he ran off to rescue his own child, leaving the others to their fate. So now we know why Joseph cannot sleep, and when he does, it is only to awaken to a reality that will not allow him to forget his dream, even when awake he dreams the same dream night after night, and when asleep, though trying desperately to avoid it, he knows he will encounter that dream again, for it hovers on the threshold between sleep and waking and he must pass it when he enters and when he leaves. This confusion is best defined as remorse. Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.
Mary is pregnant again. No angel disguised as a beggar came knocking at the door this time to announce the child's arrival, no sudden gust of wind swept the heights of Nazareth, no luminous earth was discovered in the ground. Mary told Joseph in the simplest words, I'm with child. She did not say to him, for example, Look into my eyes and see how our second child is shining there, nor did he reply this time, Don't think I hadn't noticed, I was waiting for you to tell me. He just listened, remained silent, and eventually said, Is that so, and carried on planing a piece of wood with apparent indifference, but, then, we know that his thoughts are elsewhere. Mary also knows, since that night of torment when her husband blurted out the secret he had kept to himself, and she was not altogether surprised, she had been expecting something like this after the angel told her in the cave, You will have a thousand cries all around you. A good wife would have said to her husband, Don't fret, what's done is done, and besides, your first duty was to rescue your own child. But Mary has changed and is no longer what one would normally refer to as a good wife, perhaps because she heard the angel utter those grave words that excluded no one, I am not an angel who grants pardons. Had she been allowed to discuss these deep matters with Joseph, who was so well versed in Holy Scripture, he might have pondered the nature of this angel who appeared from nowhere to announce that he did not grant pardons, a statement which seems superfluous, since everyone knows that the power to pardon belongs to God alone. For an angel to say that he does not grant pardons is either meaningless or much too meaningful. An angel of judgment, perhaps, might exclaim, You expect me to forgive you, what a silly idea, I did not come to forgive, I came only to punish. But angels, by definition, leaving aside those cherubim with flaming swords who were posted by the Lord to guard the path to the tree of life lest our first parents or we, their descendants, try to return to steal the fruits, angels, as we were saying, are not vigilantes entrusted with the corrupt albeit socially necessary enforcement of repression. Angels exist to make our lives easier, they protect us when we are about to fall down a well, help us cross the bridge over the precipice, pull us to safety just as we are about to be crushed by a runaway chariot or a car without brakes. An angel worthy of the name could have spared Joseph all this torment simply by appearing in a dream to the fathers of the children of Bethlehem to warn them, Gather your wife and child and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you to return, for Herod means to slaughter your child. In this way the children could have all been saved, Jesus hidden in the cave with his parents and the others on their way to Egypt, where they would remain until the same angel returned to tell the fathers, Arise, gather your wife and child and return to Israel, for he who tried to kill your children is dead. Thus the children would return to the places where they came from and where eventually they would meet their deaths at the appointed hour, because angels, however powerful, have their limitations, just like God. After much thought, Joseph might have reached the conclusion that the angel who appeared in the cave was an infernal creature, an agent of Satan disguised this time as a shepherd, and further proof of the weakness and gullibility of women, who can be led astray by a fallen angel. If Mary could speak, if she were less secretive and revealed the details of that strange annunciation, things would be different, Joseph would use other arguments to support his theory, most important, the fact that this so-called angel did not proclaim, I am an angel of the Lord, or, I come in the name of the Lord. He simply said, I am an angel, before adding cautiously, Keep this to yourself, as if afraid for anyone else to know. Some may argue that such details contribute nothing new to our understanding of what is an all-too-familiar story, but as far as this narrator is concerned, it is crucial to know, when interpreting past and future events, whether the angel came from heaven or from hell. Between angels of light and angels of darkness there are differences not just of form but also of essence, substance, and content, and while it is true that whoever created the former also created the latter, He subsequently attempted to correct His mistake.