«Are You an Israelite?» asks the man.
«Yes, I am.»
«I, too, or almost, although I do not look like one. But I lived a long time abroad and I got into many habits, of which these fools here disapprove. I am better than the others. But they say that I am a demon, because I read a great deal, I breed poultry which I sell to the Romans and I can cure people by means of herbs. When young, because of a woman, I quarrelled with a Roman – I was at Cintium then – and I stabbed him. He died, I lost one eye and all my wealth and I was sentenced to life imprisonment. But I knew how to cure people, and I cured the daughter of one of the guards. I thus won his friendship and some freedom… I used it to escape. I acted badly, because the man certainly paid for my flight with his life. But freedom seems so beautiful when one is a prisoner…»
«Is it not really beautiful afterwards?»
«No. Jail, where one is alone, is better than being in contact with men who do not allow you to be alone and come around us to hate us…»
«Did you study philosophy?»
«I was a teacher at Cintium… I was a proselyte…»
«And now?»
«Now I am nothing. I live according to the reality of facts. And I hate, as I was and am still hated.»
«Who hates you?»
«Everybody. And God is the first. She was my wife… and God allowed her to be unfaithful to me and ruin me. I was free and respected, and God allowed me to become a convict serving a life sentence. God abandoned me, men were unfair. Both He and they destroyed me. There is nothing left here…» and he strikes his forehead and his chest. «Rather, here, in my head, there are my thoughts, my knowledge. It is in here that there is nothing» and he spits contemptuously.
«You are wrong. You still have two things there.»
«Which?»
«Remembrance and hatred. Remove them.
188.4
Become really empty… and I will give you something new to put in there.»
«What?»
«Love.»
«Ah! Ah! You make me laugh. I have not laughed for thirty-five years, man. Since I had the proof that the woman was unfaithful to me with the Roman wine merchant. Love! Love to me! It is like me throwing jewels to my chickens! They would die of indigestion, unless they passed them out with their excrement. The same would happen to me. Your love would be a burden to me, if I could not digest it…»
«No, man! Do not say that!» Jesus lays His hand on the man’s shoulder, He is deeply and openly distressed.
The man looks at Him with his only eye and what he sees on that most sweet and beautiful face causes him to be struck dumb and to change his expression. From being sarcastic he becomes very serious and then really sad. He lowers his head and with a different voice he asks: «Who are You?»
«Jesus of Nazareth. The Messiah.»
«You!!!»
«I. Did you not know about Me, since you read so much?»
«I knew… But I did not know that You were alive and… above all, I did not know this. I did not know that You are good to everybody… thus… to murderers too… Forgive me for what I said… about God and love… Now I understand why You want to give me love… Because without love the world is hell, and You the Messiah want to make a paradise of it.»
«A paradise in every heart. Give Me the remembrance and the hatred that make you ill and let Me put love into your heart!»
«Oh! I wish I had known You before!… then… But when I killed, You were certainly not born yet… But later… when I was free, as free as a snake in a forest, I lived to poison people with my hatred.»
«But you did some good as well. Did you not say that you cured people by means of herbs?»
«Yes. To be tolerated. But how many times I had to struggle against my desire to poison people by means of potions!… See? I took refuge here because… it is a place where the world is ignored and which the world ignores. A cursed place. In other places I hated and was hated and I was afraid of being recognised… But I am wicked.»
«You regret having harmed the prison guard. Do you not see that there is still some goodness in you? You are not wicked… Your only trouble is that you have a large open wound, which nobody is curing… Your goodness runs out of it as blood from a wound. But if someone would cure your wound and heal it, My dear brother, goodness would increase in you, because it would no longer vanish as it forms…»
The man weeps with a bent head trying to conceal his tears. Only Jesus Who is walking beside him notices them. He notices but does not say anything else.