PERFUMES IN THE ROCK

PERFUMES IN THE ROCK

What little light had penetrated the dark cloud disappeared with the setting of the sun. The darkness was thick and sinister. A black night was shutting down on the world which on that day had lost the only Being which could give it light. Against the scarcely visible whiteness of the Hill of the Skull, the naked corpses glimmered dimly. They were obliged to work by the red light of torches, flaming without smoke in that windless air, and by that blood-red light they could see clearly, even to the long streaks of blood which had run down the foot of the cross, to the newly stirred earth.

Joseph, aided by Nicodemus and by a third helper, was scarcely able to draw out the deep-driven nails which held the feet. The ladder was still there. One of them, climbing up on it, took out the nails from the hands, supporting the loosened body with his shoulder. The others helped him to lower down the corpse, and the body was placed on the knees of the Virgin of Sorrows who had borne Him. Then they all made their way towards a garden nearby where there was a sepulcher destined for Jesus. The garden belonged to the rich Joseph, who had had the sepulcher hewn out of the stone for himself and his family, for in those days every well-to-do Jew had a family sepulcher far from all the others, and the dead were not condemned to the promiscuity of our administrative cemeteries; temporary, geometric, and democratic like all our modern magnificent barbarisms.

As soon as they had arrived at the garden, the two bearers of the dead had water brought from the well, and washed the body. Until then the women, the three Mary’s—the Virgin Mary, the contemplative Mary, the liberated Mary—had not moved from the place where He whom they loved had died. Now, defter and more skillful than men, they began to help in order that this burial, performed thus at night and in haste, would not be unworthy of Him for whom they wept. They lifted from His head the insulting crown of Pilate's legionaries, and plucked out the thorns which had penetrated the skin: they were the ones to smooth and arrange the hair clotted with blood; and to close the eyes into which they had looked so many times with pure tenderness, and that mouth which they had never kissed. Many loving tears fell upon that face where in the calm paleness of death the old sweetness shone once more, and their tears washed it with water purer than that from Joseph's well.

All His body was sullied with sweat, with dust, with blood; bloody serum oozed out from the wounds of the hands, of the feet, of the chest. When the washing was finished, the corpse was sprinkled with Nicodemus' spices, and that without sparing, for they were abundant; even the black wounds left by the nails were filled with spices. The body of Jesus had received nothing but insults and blows after the evening when the sinning woman with a premonition of this day had poured nard upon the feet and upon the head of the Pardoner. But now, as then, the murdered white body was covered with perfumes and with tears sweeter than perfumes.

Then, when the hundred pounds of Nicodemus had covered Jesus with a fragrant pall, the winding sheet was tied about the body with long linen bands, the head was wrapped in a napkin and another white cloth was spread over the face, after they had all kissed Him on the forehead.

There was space but for one body in the open sepulcher. Recently made, it had never been used. Joseph of Arimathea, not able to save Christ alive in any of his houses, now that the fury of the world had died down, gave up to Him the dark subterranean habitation hewn in the rock, and intended for his own dead body. According to the ritual the two Sanhedrist’s recited aloud the mortuary psalm, and finally, after they had placed the white-wrapped body in the cave, they closed the opening with a great stone and went away silently, followed by the others.

But the women did not follow them. They could not bring themselves to leave that rock which separated them forever from Him whom they loved more than their beauty. How could they leave Him alone in the darkness, doubly black, of the night and of the tomb, He who had been so desperately alone in His long death agony? They whispered prayers, and recalled to each other the memory of a day, or a gesture, or a word of the loved one, and if one of them tried to comfort another, the second but sobbed more bitterly. Sometimes they called Him by name as they leaned against the rock, and spoke lovingly to Him now that His ears were closed in death, as they had not dared while He was alive. They poured out, at last in the damp black shade of the garden, that love greater than love, which their poor, limited human hearts could no longer hold back.

Then finally, chilled and terrified by the night's blackness, they too went away, their eyes burning, stumbling amid the bushes and the stones, promising one another to return there as soon as the feast-day had passed.