Chapter 21 - Relaxing
We dried the kif, which had gotten soaked during the sailing. My students spent 12 days in the city and around the Roman army camp to tout our job. Sometimes, legionnaires themselves found their way to the barn. In the blink of an eye, we had lost the whole bag, raising 10 times as much money as we owed Venedad. That enabled us to eat better with it, buy new clothes, and put aside some silver money, like an apple, for thirst.
Besides the legionnaires were the ordinary inhabitants of Capernaum who bought the kif and the people who came from far and wide to see me. The Libyan herb became a universal remedy for those suffering from inner pains. A sufferer who had sniffed the beneficial smoke more easily internalized my admonitions. As before, I requested these people to descend a little from my barn in Capernaum so as not to upset Prefect Aurelius. However, sometimes, I made an exception for new women among the Messiah seekers, who were then allowed to stay for a night.
New lepers came, too, but I could no longer help them. In essence, they were desperate people who no longer believed in anything except being haunted by death everywhere.
And so it was. Some died in the extinct wasteland around Capernaum, having been driven out of the city with sticks and stones and the most stubborn among them with dogs.
Going through these scenes again, I think leprosy is the best symbol of human life; after all, of life itself, there is no cure either, in legends, herbs, and nets, in the rain that comes, in the family ties of the Gods or your own family, in government and friendship, devoid of eroticism... But really and sincerely, you can only believe in death: it is he who embodies most neighbors in impeccable religion, for life goes as it goes anyway, but if you believe in death, at least you are not fooling yourself.
Of course, I also believed in something like everyone else: that my power had been bestowed. But the miracles I performed could not be credited to myself. I understand that they were only the inexplicable refraction of light in the crystal ball of my mind.
Since then, it was rumored that I had cured a leper far beyond the borders of Galilee. In reality, this young man, son of a fisherman, had tried our kif and hoped for it so fanatically for several days in a row that in the end, he could no longer get up from his bed and, with his groans, convinced his loved ones that he was dying. I called this in. I requested to leave us alone and strictly forbade the emaciated youth to smoke any more. And I forbade my pupils and the cross from selling anymore, even if he asked for half a pinch at three times the price. He comes to no measure.
A few days later, the club got up and cycled with his father. His father tearfully brought me his gifts: smoked fish, cheese, and half an ephah of grain.
Or here, the nature of a simple under: imagine that a cow had eaten the confession of guilt I had given Venedad. At the same time, I did not know of it. I then read, thinking the writing was accurate when it no longer existed! The holy conviction of the existence of something was the magic, the miracle, that everyone eagerly awaited.
The world continued to burn every second, contour disappeared or changed, letters on the stone were erased, scrolls perished, and the cow of Chronos left no testimony of our lives.
It was just as well that the industrious Matthew occasionally took notes, even though he could fantasize like a child.
