The Sweet Miracle by Eça de Queirós

IN those days Jesus had not yet departed from Galilee and the fair luminous margins of the Lake of Tiberias; but the news of his miracles had already penetrated as far as Enganim, a rich city of strong battlements set among vineyards and olive-groves in the Country of Issachar.

One afternoon there passed down the fresh valley a man of burning, dazzled eyes, who announced that a new Prophet, a handsome Rabbi, was traversing, the plains and villages of Galilee, foretelling the coming of the Kingdom of God, and curing all human ills. And while he sat and rested beside the Fountain of the Orchards, he went on to tell how this Rabbi had healed the slave of a Roman Decurion of leprosy on the Magdala Road, merely by spreading over him the shadow of his hands; and how, another morning, he had crossed by boat to the Country of the Gerasenes where the balsam-harvest was commencing, and had raised to life the daughter of Jairus, a man of consideration and learning who expounded the Sacred Books in the Synagogue. And when the husbandmen and shepherds round about, and the dark women with water-pots on their shoulders, inquired of him in their wonderment if this was in truth the Messias of Judah, and whether the sword of fire shone before him, and if the shadows of Gog and Magog, like the shadows of twin towers, walked on either side of him -- the man, without even a draught of that thrice-cold water of which Joshua had drunk, took up his staff, shook his hair, and made his way pensively beneath the aqueduct, and straightway disappeared from sight in the mass of flowering almond trees.

But a hope, delightful as the dew in the month when the grasshopper sings, refreshed these simple souls, and now, through all the Plain that stretches its verdure to Ascalon, the plough seemed easier to bury in the soil, and the stone of the winepress lighter to move; the children, even while they plucked bunches of anemones, watched, as they went, for a light to rise past the turn of the wall, or under the sycamore, while the aged from their stone seats at the city gate ran their fingers through the threads of their beards, and no longer unfolded the old sayings with such wise certainty as of yore.

Now there lived then in Enganim an old man, named Obed, of a priestly family of Samaria, who had offered sacrifices on the altars of Mount Ebal, and was possessed of well-nourished flocks and richly bearing vineyards, and a heart as full of pride as his cellar was full of wheat. But a dry burnt wind, that wind of desolation, which, at the Lord's command, blows from the savage lands of Assur, had slain the fattest beasts of his flocks, and, on the slopes where his vines twined round the elms and stretched themselves on the graceful frames, it had left nought round the bare trees and pillars save broken twigs, shrunken stalks, and leaves eaten by curly blight. And Obed squatted at the threshold of his gate with the end of his cloak over his face, fingered the dust, lamented his old age, and ruminated complaints against a cruel God.

Now as soon as lie heard tell of the new Rabbi of Galilee, who fed the multitudes, scared demons, and repaired all misfortunes, Obed, who was a man of books, and had travelled in Phenicia, conceived in his mind that Jesus must be one of those soothsayers, well-known in Palestine, like Apollonius, or Rabbi Ben-Dossa, or Simon the Subtle. These men, even when the nights are dark, hold converse with the stars, whose secrets to them are ever clear and simple; with a wand they drive the gadflies, born in the mud of Egypt, from the standing corn, and grasping in their fingers the shadows of trees, they draw them like kindly screens over the threshing-floors at the hour of rest. Of a surety Jesus of Galilee, a younger man with newer charms, would, in return for a liberal largess, bring the mortality among his flocks to an end, and make his vineyards green once more. Thereupon Obed commanded his servants to set forth and search through all Galilee for the new Rabbi, and bring him, with promises of money or goods, to Enganim, in the Country of Issachar.

His slaves tightened their leather belts and swung out by the road of the caravans that coasts the lake and stretches as far as Damascus. One afternoon, over against the West, red as a fully ripe pomegranate, they caught sight of the fine snows of Mount Hermon. Next, amid the freshness of a soft morning, the Lake of Tiberias shone before them, transparent, cloaked in silence, more blue than the heavens, with its margins of flowery meadows, dense orchards, porphyry rocks, and white terraces amid the palm groves, under the flight of the doves. A fisherman, who was engaged in lazily untying his boat from a grassy point shaded by oleanders, listened with a smile to the slaves. The Rabbi of Nazareth? Oh! since the month of Ijar, the Rabbi with his disciples had descended to the sides whither the Jordan bears its waters. The slaves set out at a run along the margin of the stream until they came in front of the ford where it rests, stretching out in a great pool, and for a moment slumbers, motionless and green, beneath the tamarinds' shade. A man of the tribe of the Essenes, clothed from head to foot in white linen, was slowly gathering health-giving herbs by the water side with a white lambkin in his arms. The slaves humbly saluted him, for the people love those men of honest, pure hearts, as white as the vestures they wash morning by morning in the purified tanks.