Chapter 5 - Blood

It was getting light. My drunken disciples lay here and there on the ground. Everywhere swung the remnants of a drag party. On rugs beside them lay the naked women whose names there is no point in recalling now. We had been having fun well into the night. There was plenty of young wine and other goodies while street musicians played and sang for us. The feast had been put on for us by the Galilean Merchant Iran, whose caravans traveled along the shores of the Mediterranean to Egypt, Libya, and Syria.

He was interested in everything: wheat, fruits, felt, linen, leather, skins, Mycenaean pottery and Tyrian purple, myrrh, spices, oil, Odrysian slaves, wine, and weapons. With amazing tenacity, he converted that into dinars, drachmas, and aurei and became as rich as Croesus.

This big kid with his red beard was oversaturated. He wanted something special, and we offered him that opportunity. For a while, he cared about us. His impishness was accompanied by glorious haughtiness and generosity.

The Jewish law bored him to death, the Roman gods seemed to him rightly strange, and the Essene monks put him off with their inhuman asceticism. He laughed at the revived reverence among the educated people of Galilee for Isis, and so he decided to seek rapprochement with us. The Orphics could have seduced him with their sprightly mysteries, but he had no knowledge of them.

I looked tenderly at my sleeping pupils and women, walked into the garden, took a pee, drank fig water from the jug, and fell asleep again on the widow's side.

I was reminded of this carefree symposium because it had taken place not long before we departed from Capernaum, from the House guarded by the stone lions. Why? I thought then that a passionate prophet living in a large, comfortable house was unconvincing and didn't want to stick where it was too good. I thought people needed a wandering Messiah who slept under a bush and had contempt for earthly blessings. Now I understand that is not so; people believe in anyone encouraging dreamy ignorance. But back then, I was more naïve.

And we moved on.

Here, it is worth recalling what happened in Cana, in the Galilean town among the wheat fields on which giant boulders rise far apart, like remnants of the games of the ancient giants. As soon as we arrived there (it was evening), I was accosted by several people to go to a wedding feast with them. They said the son of the local judge was getting married. They talked to me without awe, a touch mockingly even. My disciples tried to talk me out of going there, but I went anyway and took Judas with me. The rest of the students wandered around town, trying to figure out how we could make a living and if there wasn't danger somewhere.

I did not like weddings; they were the most absurd thing in the world. Instead of bewailing their fate in a lonely place somewhere, the newlyweds spent money entertaining hungry guests.

And so I had ended up among them. I was given a seat at the table. I was famished but was patient and did not plunge into the food; that would not have been a pretty sight. The House where everything was taking place seemed to me very unsociable, throaty, and gloomy, even though candles were burning on the table and lamps hanging from the ceiling. I had long since noticed that I could sense whether I was in a good or bad house, where it did not depend at all on the owners. The very place on which the walls of the House were erected, they could tell you against it.

The cups were emptied, and the usual speeches in such a case were made, terrible in their complacent piousness and expectation of prosperity. No one asked me about anything, and that was unusual.

Gradually, I strengthened after eating meat with vegetables.

Judas nibbled on an apple.

After a while, the wedding master of ceremonies suddenly declared that the wine had run out. Everyone hushed and turned their gaze to me, and an old woman with a hook nose said with sly eyes, "Jesus, what now? The wine stores are already closed. We heard that you can prepare joy for the people. Make sure our joy can continue."

At that moment, I understood that everyone knew who I was, and people had been looking forward to my coming. The rumor that I was headed toward Cana had advanced on me, and people wanted to witness a miracle or prove that I was a liar.

Judas no longer nibbled on his apple but whispered that we had better leave.

But that would have been unwise. One would have interpreted that as impotence...

'Jesus, do not hide what you can do from us,' the same woman sailed on with manufactured gentleness. 'Why put your light under a bushel? Rather, let it shine before everyone, standing on a solid receptacle. Pour us light and wine, Jesus... You see the empty jugs against the wall; can you fill them?'

I looked at the row of jugs, which looked more like lampante jugs than wine containers, and I knew what to do.

'Bring me a clean and sharp knife and a drinking cup,' I said to the master of ceremonies.

He eagerly complied with the request.

'I drink you with wine drunker than a Roman senator!' Spoke, and I drew the knife across my left wrist, trying not to press too hard to get the blood flowing but not damage the tendons.

A single guest cried out.

I aimed the bloodstream at the goblet and waited until it was one-third complete. The women, the bride included, anxiously turned their heads away or slapped their hands in front of their faces.

An old woman came running, whimpering, to bandage my hand with a cloth.

'Then drink now! Everyone! Taste of my blood! Even if you wet your lips and lick them!" I cried, feeling how the event paralyzed them and brought back to me strength and self-assurance.

The guests obediently passed the goblet around, and the general excitement had risen to the top after a few minutes. They became drunk from the mere realization that they were drinking living human blood.

And everyone put on a wedding song.

Judas began to cry.

A clean-shaven man whom I was later told had been sent by the Romans, she mockingly said to the master of ceremonies, "Good wine is continuously poured first, but you have kept it until this moment...

Well, blood is miraculous. It is the most perfect component of our organism and brings together the four roots that make up all that exists: earth, fire, air, and water. In some people, the ratio of those roots is different from others. For example, my blood is so powerful because it contains more fire.

But the main thing, of course, is that man's two souls are dissolved in the blood, the soul animals, and the soul vegetables; therefore, a person who drinks blood has nothing else of need. Blood is the ideal source of life.

It would be ridiculous if that wedding was only organized to find out what I could do.