The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis Page A

loins, trying to reach the sky. He lifted high his head and opened his mouth, but suddenly his heart skipped a beat: he had just clearly heard two bare feet running behind him. He shortened his stride and listened carefully. The two feet checked their pace. His knees gave way and he stopped. The two feet stopped also.
    “I know who it is,” he whispered, trembling. “I know ...”
    But he emboldened his heart and whirled abruptly in order to catch sight of her before she vanished. ... No one!
    The eastern sky had turned dark cherry. The ears of grain were fully ripe; the stalks inclined their heads in the windless air and awaited the sickle. Not a single object was on the plain—not a beast, not a man. Only in Nazareth, behind him, was there any sign of life. Smoke had already begun to rise from one or two houses. The women were awakening.
    He felt somewhat reassured. Better not lose time, he reflected. Let’s run for all I’m worth and get around to the other side of that hill, to lose her. He started to run.
    On the other side of him the wheat towered to the height of a man. It was here in this plain of Galilee that wheat had originated, as had the vine, and wild vines still crept up the mountainsides. An ox cart creaked in the distance. Donkeys shook themselves up off the ground, sniffed the air, lifted their tails and braved. He heard laughter and chattering. Honed sickles flashed; the first mowers appeared. The sun saw them and fell on their lovely arms, necks and shins.
    When they glimpsed the son of Mary running in the distance they burst out laughing.
    “Hey there, who are you chasing,” they called to him, “or who’s chasing you?”
    But when he came closer and they were able to get a better view of him, they knew who he was. They all stopped their chatter and huddled one next to the other.
    “The cross-maker!” they murmured. “A curse on him! Yesterday I saw him crucify ...”
    “Look at the gory kerchief he’s wearing!”
    “It was his share of the clothes of the Crucified. May the blood of the innocent fall upon his head!”
    They continued hurriedly on their way, but now the laughter stuck in their throats and they were silent.
    The son of Mary went past them, left them behind him, crossed the wheatfields and reached the vineyards which covered the gentle slopes of the mountain. Seeing a fig tree, he started to slow down in order to pick a leaf and smell it. He liked the smell of fig leaves very much: they reminded him of human armpits. When he was little he used to close his eyes and smell the leaves, and he imagined he was snuggled again at his mother’s breast, sucking. ... But the moment he stopped and put out his hand to pick the leaf, cold sweat poured over his body. The two feet—which had been running behind him—suddenly stopped too. His hair stood on end. His arm still in the air, he looked all around him. Solitude. No one but God. The soil was wet, the leaves dripping; in the hollow of a tree a butterfly struggled to open its dewy wings and fly.
    I’ll scream, he decided. I’ll scream to find relief.
    Whenever he remained alone on the mountain or on the deserted plain at the hour of noon, what was it that he felt so abundantly—joy? bitterness? or was it, above everything else, fear? He always sensed God girding him about on all sides, and he would utter a wild cry, as though he wanted to make a desperate attempt to escape. Sometimes he crowed like a cock, sometimes he howled like a hungry jackal, sometimes like a dog being whipped. But as he opened his mouth now to cry out, his eye caught sight of the butterfly that was struggling to unfold its wings. He bent over, lifted it up gently and placed it high above the ground on a leaf of the fig tree, where the sun began to beat down upon it.
    “My sister, my sister,” he murmured, and he looked at it with compassion.
    Leaving the butterfly behind him to become warm, he set out once more and immediately heard the muffled tread of