I.N.R.I.: A prisoner's Story of the Cross

by Peter Rosegger

CHAPTER VII

And the days passed by. As the king had said, the boy was free. But he stayed on at the palace because he hoped one day to find the room in which the manuscripts were kept. He often strolled through the town and the palm-grove down to the river to see his parents. Thousands of slaves were working at the sluices of the stream which fertilised the land. The overseer scourged them lustily, so that many of them fell down exhausted and even dying. Jesus looked on and denounced such barbarity, until he, too, received a blow. Then he went out to the Pyramids where the Pharaohs slept, and listened if they were not weeping. He went into the Temple of Osiris and looked at the monster idols, fat, soulless, ugly, between the rounded pillars. He searched the palace untiringly for the hall in which the writings were kept, and at last he came upon it. But it was closed: its custodians were hunting jackals and tigers in the desert. They found it dark and dreary there among the great minds of old; the splendour and luxury of the court did not penetrate to the hall of writings.

Then nights came again when whispers ran through the halls, "Pharaoh weeps." And the reason, too, was whispered. He had caused the woman he loved best to be strangled, and now the astrologers declared that she was innocent. One day the king lay on his couch and desired that the boy from the Nile should be summoned to fan him. As the king was sick, Jesus agreed to go. Pharaoh was ill-humoured and impatient, neither fan nor fanning was right, and when the boy left off that was not right either.

Then Jesus said suddenly: "Pharaoh, you are sick."

The king stared at him in astonishment. A page dare to open his mouth and speak to the Son of Light! When, however, he saw the sad, sincere expression of sympathy in the boy's countenance ho became calmer, and said; "Yes, my boy, I am sick."

"King," said Jesus, "I know what is the matter with you."

"You know!"

"You keep shadows within and light without. Reverse it."

Directly the boy had said that Pharaoh got up, thinner and taller than he usually appeared to be, and haughtily pointed to the door, an angry light in his eyes.

The boy went out quietly, and did not look back.

But his words were not forgotten. In the noise and tumult of the daytime Pharaoh did not hear them; in the night, when all the brilliance was extinguished and only the miserable and unhappy waked, he heard softly echoed from wall to wall of his chamber, "Reverse it! Bring the light inside!"

Shortly before that time Jesus had discovered an aged scholar who dwelt outside the gate of Thebes, in a vaulted cave at the foot of the Pyramid. He would have nothing to do with any living thing except a goat of the desert which furnished him with milk. And as he kept always within the darkness of the vault, bending over endless hieroglyphics on half-decomposed slabs of stone, on excavated household vessels, and papyrus rolls, the goat likewise never saw the sun. Both were contented with the food brought them daily by an old fellah. The hermit was one who had surely reversed things—shadow without and light within. When Pharaoh dismissed Jesus, he sought the learned cave-dweller in order to find wisdom. At first the old man would not let him come in. What had young blood to do with wisdom?

"My son, first grow old, and then come and seek wisdom in the old writings."

The boy answered: "Do you give wisdom only for dying? I want it for living."

Then the old man let him in.

Jesus now visited the wise man every day and listened to his teachings about the world and life, and also about eternal life. The hermit spoke of the transmigration of souls, how in the course of ages souls must pass through all beings, live through all the circles of existence, according as their conduct led them upwards to the gods, or downwards to the worms in the mud. Therefore we should love the animals which the souls of men may inhabit. He spoke with deep awe of the serpent Kebados, and of the sublime Apis in the Temple of Memphis. He lost himself in all the depths and shoals of thought, verified everything by the hieroglyphics, and declared it to be scientific truth. So that the man who lived in the dark discoursed to the boy on light. He spoke of the all-holy sun-god Osiris who created everything and destroyed everything—the great, the adorable Osiris by whose eye every creature was absorbed. Then he would again solemnly and mysteriously murmur incomprehensible formulae, and the eager boy grew weary. Here, too, something evidently had to be reversed. So thinking, he went quietly forth and left the little gate open. When the old man looked up at him, there he was in the open air pasturing the goat, who, delighted at her liberty, was capering round on the grass.

"Why do you not show your reverence for truth?" he said, reprovingly.

And Jesus: "Don't you see that I am proving my reverence for your teaching. You say: We must love animals. Therefore I led the goat out into the open air, that she may feed on the fragrant grass. You say that we should kindle our eye at that of the sun-god, therefore I went out with the goat from the dark vault into the bright sunlight."

"You must learn to understand the writings."

"I want to know living creatures."

The old man looked at the boy with an air of vexation. "Tell me, you bold son of man, under what sign of the zodiac were you born?"

"Under that of the ox and the ass," answered the boy Jesus.

The man of learning immediately hurried into his cave, lighted his lamp, and consulted his hieroglyphics. Under the ox and the ass—he grew afraid. Away with Libra, away with Libra! He investigated yet again. It stood written on the stone and in the roll. He went out again, and looked at the boy, but differently from before, uneasily, in great excitement.

"Listen, boy, I've cast your horoscope."

"What is it?"

"By the ancient and sacred signs I've read your fate. Knowing under what sign of the zodiac and under which stars you were born, I can enlighten you as to the fate you go to meet so callously. Do you desire to know it?"

"If I desire to know it, I will ask my Father."

"Is your father an astrologer?"

"He guides the stars in their courses,"

"He guides the stars in their courses? What do you mean? You are a fool, a godless fool. You will learn what terrors await you. This arrogance is the beginning. His Father guides the stars in their courses indeed!"