Although she had left behind a house full of children with no one to look after them, Mary refused to turn back, and she was easy in her mind, because it is not every day that soldiers invade a village and start slaughtering young children. Besides, these Romans were not only willing but even eager to see the children grow up, provided they remained servile and paid their taxes on time. Mother and son are walking along the road by themselves, because Ananias's relatives, some half dozen of them, are so busy chatting that they have fallen behind. Mary and Jesus have only words of anguish to exchange and so prefer to remain silent rather than distress each other. A strange silence hangs everywhere, no birds are singing, the wind has died down, there is nothing but the sound of footsteps, and even that withdraws, like a polite intruder who has entered an empty house by mistake. Sepphoris comes into sight suddenly as they turn a bend in the road. Several houses are still burning, thin columns of smoke rise here and there, walls are blackened, trees scorched from top to bottom, the foliage intact but the color of rust. And there on our right, the rows of crosses.
Mary started running, but they were still some distance away and she had to slow down and catch her breath. As a result of giving birth to all those children without letup, her heart is weaker. Jesus, a respectful son, would like to accompany his mother, remaining at her side, now and later, so that they can share the same joys and sorrows, but she walks so slowly, dragging her feet, At this rate, Mother, we'll never get there. She makes a gesture as if to say, You go ahead and I'll catch up. Leaving the road, Jesus sprints across the field to save time, Father, Father, he calls, hoping that his father will not be there, fearing that he will find him. He reaches the first row, some of the crucified men are still hanging from the crosses, others have already been taken down and lie waiting on the ground. Few have relatives to gather around them, for most of these rebels came from afar, part of a mixed contingent which made its last united assault and is now finally dispersed, each man left to confront alone the ineffable solitude of death. Jesus does not see his father, his heart would rejoice but his reason tells him, Wait, we haven't got to the end of the row. But in fact the end is right here. Stretched out on the ground is the father he has been seeking, there is little blood, only the open wounds on the wrists and feet, You could be sleeping, Father, but no, you are not asleep, how could you possibly sleep with your legs twisted in that position, how charitable of them to remove you from the cross, but there are so many bodies here that the good souls who removed you had no time to straighten your broken bones. The boy named Jesus kneels beside his dead father and weeps, he cannot bring himself to touch the corpse, but then grief overcomes his fear and he embraces the motionless body. Father, Father, he sobs aloud, and another cry accompanies his, What have they done to you, Joseph, it is the voice of Mary, who has arrived at last, exhausted and sobbing her heart out, for when she saw her son come to a halt in the distance, she knew what to expect. Mary's tears overflow when she sees the pitiful state of her husband's legs. We do not know what happens to life's sorrows after death, especially those last moments of suffering, it is possible that everything ends with death, but we cannot be certain that the memory of suffering does not linger at least for several hours in this body we describe as dead, nor can we rule out the possibility that matter uses putrefaction as a last resort to rid itself of the suffering. With a tenderness she would never have permitted herself to show while her husband was alive, Mary pulled down Joseph's tunic after trying to straighten the broken legs that gave him the grotesque appearance of a puppet coming apart. Jesus helped his mother pull the tunic down over the thin shinbones, perhaps the most vulnerable part of the human body and a painful reminder of our fragile state. The feet hung sideways, and flies, drawn by the smell of blood, kept swarming around the wounds inflicted by the nail. Joseph's sandals had fallen to the ground beside the thick trunk of which he was the last fruit. Worn and covered with dust, they would have lain there forgotten if Jesus had not recovered them without thinking. As if obeying an order, and unnoticed by Mary, he tucked the sandals under his belt, a gesture of perfect symbolism, Joseph's firstborn claiming his inheritance, for certain things begin as simply as this, and even today people say, In my father's shoes I become a man.
From a discreet distance Roman soldiers kept a lookout, ready to intervene in the event of disorderly behavior among those mourning and tending to the bodies. But these people showed no sign of making trouble, they were doing nothing but praying as they went from body to body, and this took more than two hours. Rending their garments, they recited the prayer for the dead over each corpse, relatives on the left, others on the right, their voices breaking the evening silence as they chanted, Lord, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You should visit him, man is but a puff of wind, his days pass like a shadow, he lives and fails to see death and saves his soul by escaping to the tomb, man born of woman is given little time and much disquiet, he blossoms like a flower and like a flower perishes, what is man that You are mindful of him, and the son of man that You should visit him. And yet, after acknowledging man's utter insignificance in the eyes of God, in tones so deep that they seemed to come from within rather than from the voices themselves, the chorus soared in exaltation to proclaim before Almighty God our unsuspected worth, Do not forget, O Lord, that You made man a little lower than the angels and have crowned him with glory and honor. When the mourners reached Joseph, whom they did not know and who was the last of the forty, they passed on quickly, but the carpenter had taken with him to the other world everything he needed. Their haste was justified, because the law does not allow the crucified to remain unburied until the following day, and the sun was already going down. Jesus, given his youth, did not have to rend his garments, he was exempt from this ceremony of mourning, but his strong, clear voice could be heard above all the others when he intoned, Blessed be the Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who created you with justice, kept you alive with justice, nourished you with justice, who with justice allowed you to know this world, and with justice will resurrect you, blessed be the Lord, who resurrects the dead. Stretched out on the ground, Joseph, if he can still feel the pain of the nails, may perhaps also hear these words, and he must know what part God's justice played in his life, now that he can no longer expect anything more from either the one or the other. The mourners, finished praying, now had to bury their dead, but there were so many dead, and with night fast approaching it was impossible to find a fitting place for all of them, that is to say a real tomb covered with a stone, and as for wrapping the bodies in mortuary cloth or even a simple shroud, there was no hope of that. So they decided to dig a long trench to hold them, which was not the first time nor would it be the last that men were buried where they lay. Jesus too was given a spade, and he set about digging vigorously beside the grown-ups. Destiny in its wisdom decreed that Joseph be buried in a grave dug by his own son, thus fulfilling the prophecy, The son of man will bury man, while he himself remains unburied. However enigmatic these words seem at first, they merely state the obvious, for the last man, by virtue of being last, will have no one to bury him. But this will not be true of the boy who has just buried his father, the world will not end with him, and we shall be here for thousands and thousands of years in a constant succession of births and deaths, and if man has always been the implacable foe and executioner of man, all the more reason for him to go on being the gravedigger of man.