The words that he had spoken were shocking, even
obscene. Eat my flesh, he had said, and live
forever! Before he had even finished, some in the crowd
were already turning to go, the eagerness on their faces
turned to disappointment and horror, and a learned man
whose face had been starting to soften
was standing at a respectable distance from the masses
pursing his lips with contempt
and a kind of glee.
When he came back to his friends it was the same. Some had
already gone, slipped away without a word; more than a few
were ready with the flimsy excuses he knew so well; two or
three had courage or audacity enough to look him in the face
and say "That was disgusting!" . . . Finally surrounded
by his most precious ones, he lifted his weary eyes to their wary ones
and asked the question that was on all of their minds.
You, too, now?
The twelve men remembered the days when living was simple.
One closed his eyes and sighed, remembering the salty smell
of the sea air, the motion of the boat, the camaraderie of
the crew and the satisfying heaviness of a good catch;
a cup of wine and a bowl of stew, the tenderness of a woman. . . .
He could go back to that. Everything would be the same.
Like a fish gasping for life on the floor of a boat, thrown back overboard
by a merciful hand. But a man wasn't a fish, and it wasn't the same at all.
There was nothing the same. . . .
Trembling he rose. The others nodded open-mouthed as he spoke.
Where - to whom - shall we go? There is nothing else . . . not
anymore. . . . He spoke with increasing courage
and certainty, for the next breath he drew
told him he was alive.
