Leonid Andreyev

“ Mary Magdalene blushed and dropped her head till her luxuriant golden hair hid her entire face leaving merely the rounded white chin visible:
“How mean art thou, Judas. I seek to forget it, but thou remindest me.”
“No, Mary, thou shouldest not forget it. Why? Let others forget that thou wast a sinner, but thou forget not. It is meet that others forget it, but why shouldest thou?”
“I lived in sin.”
“Let him fear who has committed no sin. But he who has committed sin, why should he fear? Do the dead fear death and not the living? No, the dead mock the living and their fear of death.” ”

“ And that night for a long time they remained awake thinking over the solemn and triumphant entry, and Peter was like unto a madman; he was as one possessed by the demon of merriment and pride. He shouted loudly, drowning the speech of others with his leonine roar, he laughed uproariously, flinging his laughter at the heads of others like large rolling boulders, he embraced John, and James and even kissed Judas. And he boisterously admitted that he had harbored fears concerning Jesus, but now feared no longer, for he saw the love the people bore for Him. ”

“ There Mary Magdalene is weeping. There weeps the mother of Jesus. Let them weep. As if her tears meant anything, for that matter the tears of all the mothers, all the women in the universe!
“What are tears?” asks Judas and frenziedly pushes onward the disobliging time, pummels it with his fists, curses it like a slave. It is someone else’s, that is why it does not obey. If it were Judas! but it belongs to all these who are weeping, laughing, gossiping as if they were in the marketplace. It belongs to the sun, it belongs to the cross and to the heart of Jesus who is dying so slowly. ”

“ Judas is our brother and you have deeply offended against him,” thus sayeth our Teacher. “Shame on us, brethren!”
In the doorway stood Judas, pale and with a sickly smile. John with a quick movement approached him and kissed him thrice on the cheek. And after him, exchanging glances and awkwardly, came the others, James, Philip, and the rest. After each kiss Judas wiped his mouth, though he received the kiss with a resounding smack as if the sound afforded him much pleasure. The last to kiss him was Peter.
“We are all fools, Judas. We are all blind. One alone is seeing, One alone is wise. ”

“ The latter glanced a moment at the priest and leaping from his place cut his way into the rear of the departing throng, bellowing with wrath and fear.
With the radiant and benign smile of compassion towards their unbelief and fear—all aglow with the might of limitless faith, Father Vassily repeated for the second time with solemn and regal simplicity:
“I say unto thee, Arise!”
But still is the corpse and its tightly locked lips are dispassionately guarding the secret of Eternity. And silence. Not a sound is heard in the deserted church. ”

“ 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!” ”

“ The Popadya fell to her knees by the bedside of her husband and peered into his face: in the faint bluish light of the oil lamp it seemed as pale as the face of a corpse and as immobile, and only his black eyes were open and squinted in her direction. He lay still and flat on his back like a man stricken with a painful disease, or like a child frightened by an evil dream and afraid to move.
“Pray, Vassya!” whispered the Popadya, stroking his clammy hands which were crossed upon his breast like the hands of a corpse.
“I cannot. I am afraid. Light the lamp, Nastya.” ”

“ Then came Lazarus to a haughty sage and the sage told him:
“I know all the terrors that thou canst relate to me, Lazarus. Wherewith wilt thou terrify me?”
But it was not long before the sage realized that the knowledge of the horrible is not the horrible, and that the vision of death is not death itself. And he realized that wisdom and folly are the equals in the sight of the Infinite, for the Infinite knows them not. And the boundaries between knowledge and ignorance, between truth and falsehood, between height and depth vanished, and his formless thoughts were suspended in emptiness. ”

“ A gorilla might become an absolute ruler over men! And a golden throne might be reared for it to sit on! And divine honor might be paid to it, and it might lay dawn the laws of life for the people. A hoary gorilla, a pitiful survival of the forest!
The brief autumn day is drawing to a close, and the people begin to express impatience. Why bother so long with the tyrant? What, is there some new treachery being hatched? In the twilight of an ante-chamber two deputies meet. They scrutinize one another and exchange a glance of mutual recognition. ”

“ With every fibre of her inflamed brain she strove to resurrect the sweet face of the little gentle lad; she sang his favorite ditties; she imitated his smile; she pictured to herself his agony as he was choking and strangling in the turbid waters; and she felt his nearness, felt the flames of the great and passionately desired grief blaze up within her heart, but with abrupt swiftness—unperceived by eye or ear—the conjured vision, the longed for grief, vanished into nothingness, and out of the chilling lifeless void the monstrous, motionless mask of the idiot was staring into her eyes. ”

“ Judas has deceived you, do you hear me? Not Him did he betray, but you, ye wise ones, you, ye strong ones, he betrayed unto shameful death which shall not end in eternity. Thirty pieces of silver! Yes. Yes. That is the price of your own blood, blood that is filthy as the swill which the women cast out from the gates of their houses. Oh Annas, Annas, aged, grey-bearded, stupid Annas, choking with law, why didst thou not give another piece of silver, another obolus? ”

“ What can keep from tearing the thin veil that covers the eyes of the people, so thin that it almost is not? What if they suddenly comprehend? What if they move in one immense throng of men, women and children, silent, without shouting, and overwhelm the soldiers, drowning them in their own blood, root out the accursed cross and the hands of the survivors raise aloft upon the brow of the Earth the released Jesus? Hosannah! Hosannah!
Hosannah? No. Let Judas lie down on the ground, let him lie down and bare his teeth like a dog and watch and wait until they all rise. ”

“ Lazarus hesitated and again replied listlessly, stolidly:
“Once I was dead.”
“Listen to me, thou enigma”, resumed the Emperor, in measured and severe words voicing the thoughts which had been in his mind before. “My empire is the empire of the living, my people is a living people and not dead. Thou art out of place here. I do not know thee, I do not know what thou hast seen There. But whether thou liest—I abhor thy lying, and if thou be telling the truth I abhor thy truth. In my bosom I feel the throbbing of life. ”

“ Such a skull does not bode peace and concord; such a skull leaves in its wake the noise of bloody and cruel conflicts. The face of Judas, too, was double: one side, with its black, keen, observing eye was living, mobile, ready to gather into a multitude of irregular wrinkles. The other side was free from wrinkles, deathly smooth, flat and rigid; and though in size it was equal to the other, it seemed immense because of the wide-open, sightless eye. Covered with an opaque film it never closed night or day, facing alike the light and the darkness ”