When the King Loses His Head, and Other Stories

by Leonid Andreyev

CHAPTER VII.

The moon had already risen when Jesus started towards Mount Olivet where he was wont of late to pass his nights. But He lagged strangely, and His disciples, who were ready to proceed, urged Him on. Then He suddenly spoke:

“He who has a sack let him take it, likewise a staff. And He who has none, let him sell his raiment and buy a sword. For I say unto you that this day it shall happen unto me as even was written: he was counted among the transgressors!”

The disciples were amazed and exchanged confused glances.

But Peter replied:

“Lord! Here are two swords.”

He glanced searchingly into their kindly faces, dropped His head and gently replied:

“It is enough.”

Loudly echoed the steps of the wanderers through the narrow streets and the disciples were terrified at the sounds of their own steps. Their black shadows lengthened upon the white moon-illuminated walls and they were terrified at the sight of their own shadows. Thus silently they passed through the sleeping city. Now they passed out of the gates of Jerusalem and in a deep cleft among the hills that were filled with mysterious and immobile shadows the brook of Kedron met their gaze. Now everything terrified them. The soft gurgling and the splashing of the water against the stones sounded to them like voices of people lying in ambush. The shapeless fanciful shadows of rocks and trees obstructing their way worried them, and the motionless stillness of the night appeared to them endowed with life and movement. But as they ascended and neared the garden of Gethsemane where they had spent so many nights in security and peace they gradually gained courage. Now and then they cast a backward glance at the sleeping city now reposing white in the light of the moon and discussed their recent fright; and those who walked in the rear heard an occasional fragment of the Teacher’s words. He was telling them that they would all forsake Him.

They stopped in the very outskirts of the garden. Most of the disciples regained right there and with subdued voices commenced to make preparations for sleep, spreading their mantles in the transparent lacework of shadows and moonlight. But Jesus, torn with disquietude, with four of His nearest disciples plunged further into the depths of the garden. There they sat down on the ground that had not yet grown cold from the heat of the day, and while Jesus observed silence, Peter and John lazily exchanged meaningless remarks. Yawning with weariness they spoke of the chilly night and remarked how dear the meat was in Jerusalem, while fish was not to be had at all. They were guessing at the number of worshippers that would gather in Jerusalem during the holidays, and Peter, stretching his words into a prolonged yawn, affirmed that they would amount to twenty thousand, while John, and his brother Tames indolently claimed that the number would not exceed ten thousand. Suddenly Jesus quickly rose to His feet.

“My soul is sorrowful even unto death. Tarry ye here and watch a while,” He said and with swift steps He retired into the grove where He was lost in the impenetrable maze of light and shadows.

“Where did He go?” wondered John raising himself on his elbow. Peter turned his head in the direction of the departed Teacher and wearily answered:

“I don’t know.” And once more loudly yawning he reclined on his back and lay still. The others too had quieted down by this time and the vigorous sleep of healthy fatigue chained their stolid figures. Through his heavy sleep Peter dimly saw something white bending over him and seemed to hear some voice that sounded afar off and died leaving no trace in his dulled consciousness:

“Simon Peter, sleepest thou?”

And once more he was fast asleep, and again some still voice reached his ear and died away leaving no trace:

“Could ye not watch with me one brief hour?”

“Lord, if Thou knewest how sleepy I am,” he thought in half slumber, but it seemed to him as if he had said it aloud. And again he slept and a long time passed when suddenly there stood beside him the form of Jesus and a sonorous waking voice roused him and the others:

“Are ye still sleeping and resting? It is finished. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be betrayed into the hands of sinners.”

The disciples leaped to their feet, picking up their mantles in confusion and shivering with the chill of sudden awaking. Through the maze of trees, illuminating them with the lurid light of their torches, with heavy tramping of feet and loud noise, and the crack of breaking twigs, a crowd of warriors and temple attendants was seen approaching. And from the other side the rest of the disciples came running, trembling with the cold, with terrified, sleepy faces, failing to realize what had occurred and anxiously inquiring:

“What is this? Who are these with torches?”

Thomas, pale, with his beard awry, with chatting teeth, remarked to Peter:

“Apparently these men are after us.”

Now the crowd of warriors surrounded them and the smoking unsteady glare of the torches had chased the quiet and serene radiance of the moon somewhere into the heights over the treetops. At the head of the warriors was Judas of Kerioth; scurrying hither and thither and keenly rolling his seeing eye he searched for Jesus. At last he found Him, and resting for a moment his glance on the tall and slender form for the Master he hurriedly whispered to the attendants: “He whom I shall kiss the same is the man. Take Him and lead Him carefully. But be careful, do you hear me?”

Then hurriedly moving toward Jesus, who awaited him in silence, he plunged like a dagger a steady and piercing glance into His calm, dark eyes.

“Rejoice, Rabbi,” he exclaimed loudly, imbuing the words of common salutation with a strange and terrible significance.

But Jesus was silent, and the disciples gazed awestricken upon the Traitor, unable to fathom how the soul of Man could contain so much wickedness. With a hasty look the Iscariot measured their confused ranks, noted the tremor that threatened to change into the abject palsy of terror, noted their pallor, the meaningless smiles, the nerveless movements of arms that seemed to be gripped with iron clamps at the shoulder; and his heart was set aflame with bitter anguish not unlike the agony which had oppressed Jesus a short time since. His soul transformed into a hundred ringing and sobbing chords, he rushed forward to Jesus and tenderly kissed His windchilled cheek, so softly, so tenderly, with such agony of love and yearning that were Jesus a flower upheld by a slender stem, that kiss would not have shaken from it one pearl of dew or dislodged one tender leaf.

“Judas,” said Jesus, and the lightning of His glance bared the monstrous mass of forbidding shadows that were the soul of the Iscariot, but did not reveal its boundless depths. “Judas! With a kiss betrayest thou the Son of Man?”

And He saw that hideous chaos quivering, stirring and agog through and through. Speechless and stern as Death in his haughty majesty stood Judas of Kerioth and all of his being within him groaned, thundered and wailed with a myriad of stormy and fiery voices: “Yes! With a kiss of love we betray Thee. With a kiss of love we betray Thee unto mockery, torture and death. With a voice of love we summon torturers from their dark lairs, and rear a cross. And high above the gloom of the earth upon the cross we raise up love crucified by love!”

Thus stood Judas, wordless and cold as death, and the cry of his soul was met by the cries and the tumult that encircled Jesus. With the rude indecision of armed force, with the awkwardness of a dimly grasped purpose the soldiers had already seized Him by the hand and were dragging Him somewhere, mistaking their own aimlessness for resistance, their own terror for their victim’s mockery and scorn. Like a herd of frightened lambs the disciples had huddled together, offering no resistance, though impeding everybody including themselves; and only a few had any thought of going or acting for themselves, apart from the rest. Surrounded on every side, Peter, son of Simon, with an effort, as if having lost all strength, drew the sword from its sheath and weakly dropped it with a glancing blow upon the head of one of the servants,—but failed to harm him in the least. And observing this Jesus commanded him to drop the useless weapon. With a faint rattle the sword fell to the ground, a piece of metal so manifestly bereft of its power to pierce and to injure that none troubled to pick it up. Thus it lay in the mud and many days later some children found it in the same spot and made it their plaything.

The soldiers were dispersing the disciples and the latter again huddled together stupidly getting into the soldiers’ way, and this continued until the soldiers were seized with a contemptuous wrath. There one of them with a frown walked up to the shouting John, while another roughly brushed aside the arm of Thomas who had placed it upon his shoulder in an endeavor to argue with him, and in his turn shook threateningly a powerful balled fist before a pair of very straight-looking and transparent eyes. And John ran, as also did Thomas and James; and all the disciples, as many as were there, forsaking Jesus, ran helter-skelter to save themselves. Losing their mantles, running into the trees, stumbling against stones and falling they fled into the mountains, driven by terror and in the stillness of the moonlit night the ground resounded under their fugitive feet. Some unknown, who had evidently just risen from sleep, for he was covered with only a blanket, excitedly scurried to and fro in the crowd of warriors and servitors. But as they tried to seize him he cried out in fear and started to run, like the others, leaving his raiment in the hands of the soldiers. Thus perfectly nude, he ran with desperate leaps and his naked body gleamed oddly in the moonlight.

When Jesus was led away Peter emerged from his hiding place behind the trees and from a distance followed his Teacher. And seeing ahead of him another man who walked in silence, he thought it was John and softly called to him:

“John, is it thou?”

“Ah, thou Peter?” replied the other stopping, and Peter recognized the Betrayer’s voice. “Why then Peter didst thou not flee with the others?”

Peter stopped and loathingly replied:

“Get thee behind me, Satan.”

Judas laughed and paying no more attention to Peter walked on towards the place where gleamed the smoking torches and the rattle of arms mingled with the tramp of feet. Peter followed him cautiously and thus almost together they entered the court of the high priest’s house and joined a crowd of servants warming themselves at the fire. Judas was sullenly warming his bony hands over the logs when he heard somewhere in the rear the loud voice of Peter:

“No, I don’t know Him.”

But someone evidently insisted that he was a disciple of Jesus, for even more loudly Peter repeated:

“But no and no, I don’t know whereof ye are speaking.”

Without looking around and smiling involuntarily Judas nodded his head affirmingly and murmured:

“Just so, Peter. Yield to none thy place at the side of Jesus.”

And he did not see how the terror-stricken Peter departed from the court in order not to be caught again. And from that evening until the very death of Jesus Judas never saw near Him any of His disciples: and in that multitude there were only these two, inseparable unto death, strangely bound together by fellow-suffering,—He who was betrayed unto mockery and torture and he who had betrayed Him. From one chalice of suffering they drank like brothers, the Betrayed and the the Traitor, and the fiery liquid seared alike the pure and the impure lips.

Gazing fixedly at the fire which beguiled the eye into a sensation of heat, holding over it his lanky and shivering hands, all tangled into a maze of arms and legs, trembling shadows and fitful light, the Iscariot groaned pitifully and hoarsely:

“How cold! My God, how cold!”

Thus in the night time, when the fisher folk have set out in their boats leaving ashore a smouldering campfire some strange denizen of the deep may come forth from the bowels of the sea and creeping to the fire gaze on it fixedly and wildly, stretching its limbs towards the flames and groan pitifully and hoarsely:

“How cold! Oh, my God, how cold!”

Suddenly behind his back the Iscariot heard a tumult of loud voices, cries, the sound of rude laughter, full of the familiar, sleepily-greedy malice, and the thud of sharp, quick, blows raining on a living body. He turned around, pierced through and through with agonized pain, aching in every limb and in every bone—they were beating Jesus.

It has come then.

He saw the soldiers lead Jesus into the guard-house. The night was passing, the fires were going out, ashes began to cover them, and from the guard-house there came still the noise of hoarse shouts, laughter and oaths. They were beating Jesus. As one who has lost his way the Iscariot scurried about the empty court, stopping himself suddenly on a run, raising his head and starting off again, stumbling in surprise against the campfires and the walls. Then he glued his face to the walls of the guard-house, to the cracks in the door, to the windows and greedily watched what was going in within. He saw a stuffy, crowded, dirty little room, like all the guard-houses in the world, with a floor that had been diligently spat on and with walls that were greasy and stained as if hundreds of filthy people had walked or slept upon them. And he saw the Man who was being beaten. They smote Him on the face and on the head, they flung Him from one to another across the room like a sack. And because He did not cry out or resist after minutes of strained observation it actually appeared as though it were not a living being but some limp manikin without bones or blood that was thrown about. And the figure bent over oddly, just like a manikin, and when in falling it struck the floor with its head the impression of the contact was not like that of some hard object striking another, but as of some thing soft and incapable of pain. And after watching it long it seemed like some weird and interminable game, something that almost amounted to an illusion. After one vigorous blow the man or the manikin smoothly dropped on the knees of a soldier. He pushed it away and it turned and fell on the next man’s knees, and so on. Shouts of wild laughter greeted this game and Judas also smiled—as if some powerful hand with fingers of steel had torn open his mouth. The lips of Judas had played him false this time.

The night seemed to drag and the campfires still smouldered. Judas fell back from the wall and slowly trudged over to one of the fires, stirred up the coals, revived the flames, and though now he did not feel cold, he held over it his slightly trembling hands. And longingly he murmured:

“Ah, it hurts, little son, it hurts, child, child, child. It pains, very, very much.”

Then he walked over to the window that gleamed yellow from the dim lantern within the bars and once more he commenced to watch the chastisement of Jesus. Once before the very eyes of Judas flitted the vision of His dark face, now disfigured and encircled in a maze of tangled hair. There someone’s hand seized this hair, felled the Man and methodically turning the head from side to side began to wipe with His face the filthy floor. Under the very window a soldier slept opening his wide-open mouth wherein two rows of teeth gleamed white and shiny. Now somebody’s broad back with a fat bare neck shut out the view from the window and nothing more could be seen. And suddenly all grew still.

“What is it? Why are they silent? What if they have comprehended?”

Instantly the head of Judas was filled with the roaring, shouting and tumult of a thousand frenzied thoughts. What if they have realized? What if they have comprehended that this was—the very best among men. This is so plain, so simple. What is going on there now? Are they kneeling before Him, weeping softly, kissing His feet? There He will emerge in an instant, and behind Him will come forth in abject submission the others; how He will come forth and draw near to Judas, the conqueror, the Son of Man, the Lord of Truth, God....

Who is deceiving Judas? Who is right?

But no. Shouts and uproar again. They are beating Him again. They have not comprehended. They have not realized and they are beating Him with greater violence, more cruelly. And the fires are burning low, being covered with ashes, and the smoke over them is as transparently blue as the air, and the sky is as light as the moon. It is the dawn of day.

“What is day?” asked Judas.

Now everything is ablaze, everything glows, everything has grown young, and the smoke above is no longer blue but pink. The sun is rising.

“What is the sun?” asketh Judas.