And yet, I know I will be. I really will have to hold out. Come on, don’t think about it, there’s no point, keep going. If only I weren’t sinking into the mud, which makes the cross twice as heavy!
It doesn’t help matters when people start pushing toward me as I go by. I hear the most extraordinary comments:
“Not acting so clever, now, are we?”
“If you are a magician, why don’t you get yourself out of this?”
The positive side is that I don’t have it in me to despise them. I don’t think about it. All my energy has been requisitioned for my burden.
Don’t fall. It’s forbidden. Moreover, if you fall, you’ll have to get back up. It will be worse. Yes, there are ways for it to be worse. Don’t fall, I beg of you.
I feel like I’m about to fall. It’s a matter of seconds. There’s nothing I can do, there are limits, and I’m reaching them. There, I have fallen. The cross has knocked me down, I’ve got my nose in the mud. At least this gives me a few seconds of deliverance. I savor this strange freedom; I enjoy the pleasure of my weakness. Naturally, the blows instantly rain down on me, I practically don’t feel them, since it hurts all over.
Off we go, once again, I lift up the monstrous weight. I’m on my feet again, staggering, and now I know the cost. Matthew, 11:30, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Not for me, my friends. The word of God is not addressed to me, here. But that I knew. To experience it is different. My entire being protests. What enables me to go on is that voice I identify with the husk, and which murmurs, constantly, “Accept it.”
I thought I had touched bottom, but there stands my mother. No. Don’t look at me, please. Alas, I see that you see, and that you understand. Your eyes are wide with horror. It’s beyond pity, you are living through what I am living through, only worse, because it’s always worse when it’s your own child. It’s against nature to die before your own mother. If on top of it she is present during my torture, there can be nothing more cruel.
This is not a final, beautiful moment, it is the ugliest of moments. I don’t have the strength to tell her to go away, and even if I did, she wouldn’t listen. My dear mother, I love you, don’t watch your son suffering like a dog, look away from what I am enduring. If only you could faint, mother!
My father, who never answers my prayers, has strange ways of showing me—how to put it—not his solidarity, let alone his compassion, so under the circumstances, I see no other word for it than this: his existence. The Romans are beginning to realize that I will not make it alive to Mount Calvary. For them, this would be a bitter defeat: what’s the point of crucifying a dead man? So, they have stopped a man on his way back from his fields, a cocky fellow who happened to be passing by.
“You’ve been requisitioned. Help this condemned man to carry his burden.”
Even though he has received an order, the man is a miracle. He doesn’t give it a second thought, he sees a stranger staggering under a burden that is too heavy for him, and, without further ado, he helps me.
He helps me!
All my life, this has never happened. I didn’t know what it was like. Someone is helping me. Never mind why.
I could weep. In that abject species that doesn’t give a damn about me and for whom I’m sacrificing myself, there is this man who hasn’t come to enjoy the show, and who, I can tell, is helping me with all the goodness of his heart.
If he’d just shown up on the street by chance and seen me staggering under the cross, I think he would have reacted in exactly the same way: not pausing to think for even a second, he would have run up to help. There are people like that. They don’t know how rare they are. If we asked Simon of Cyrene why he behaves this way, he wouldn’t understand the question: he doesn’t know that you can be any other way.
My father created a strange species: they’re either bastards with opinions, or generous souls who do not think. In the state I’m in, I’m not thinking, either. I’ve discovered that I have a friend in Simon: I’ve always loved strong, sturdy people. They’re never the ones who cause a problem. It suddenly feels as if the cross doesn’t weigh a thing.
“Let me carry my share,” I tell him.
“Honestly, it’s easier if you let me do it,” he replies.
I don’t mind. But the Romans aren’t having it. Simon is a good sort, and he tries to explain his point of view:
“This cross isn’t heavy. If anything, the condemned man is getting in my way.”
“The condemned man has to carry his burden,” a soldier shouts.
“I don’t understand. Do you want me to help him, or don’t you?”
“You’re a pain in the ass. Get the hell out!”
Sheepish, Simon looks at me as if to imply he’s put his foot in it. I smile at him. It was too good to be true.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Thank you,” he says, oddly.
He looks almost upset.
There’s no time for a proper farewell. I have to keep moving ahead, dragging this dead weight. And I’ve noticed something I could not have predicted: the cross is not as heavy now. It is still horrific, but the episode with Simon has changed things. It’s as if my friend took away with him the most inhuman part of my burden.
This miracle—because it is a miracle—has nothing to do with me. Find me a more extraordinary form of magic in the Scriptures. You will seek in vain.
It’s unbearably hot. My eyebrows are no longer doing their job, the sweat on my brow is trickling into my eyes, I can’t see where I’m going. The Romans guide me with the crack of their whips; it’s as brutal as it is ineffective. I didn’t know it was possible to sweat this much. How can there be so much water and salt in me?
And suddenly, a cloth sets me free: a piece of fabric as soft as it is delightful passes over my face in a silky caress. Who can be making such a gesture? Someone as kind as Simon of Cyrene, but that tall beanpole would not be able to wipe my face so delicately.
I don’t want it to stop, and, at the same time, I’d like to know who this kindly soul is. The cloth is withdrawn, and I find myself looking at the loveliest woman on earth. She seems as stunned as I am.
The instant is frozen, time is suspended, I no longer know who I am or what I am doing here, none of it matters, there are these big, pure eyes looking at me, I have no more past or future, the world is perfect, let nothing move, we are in the imminence of the ineffable. This is what they mean by love at first sight, something colossal is about to happen, some highbrow music is missing from our desire, but this time we shall hear it at last.
“My name is Veronica,” she says.
It’s amazing how beautiful the voice of an unknown woman can be.
The crack of the whip brings me back to reality. Once again, the cross is crushing me, I drag myself forward, I’m back in hell.
Still, since the moment this torture began, fate has been hounding me, everything has come tumbling down on me, best and worst, I have found friendship, I have found love, I can scarcely get over it. Veronica—who could she be?—the music of her voice still echoing in my ears, and I have discovered that a melody can lighten the world, and a bright face can give you the strength to carry the instrument of your own torture.
On this planet, there are the likes of Simon of Cyrene and Veronica. Two incomparable examples of sublime courage.
I have returned to my century. I am struggling. Where will I find the energy not to collapse again? Some part of my brain is envisioning the moment of the accident. My eyes can see the place where it will happen. I bargain with myself, “Just one more step… just another half a step…”