Sweden's Laureate: Selected Poems of Verner von Heidenstam/The Fig-Tree
Welcome, thou cool oriental evening, welcome! After the hot day thou art as a pitcher of water after a ride in the desert. Thou art as a pale young wife, who from the hill beckons home the sweating toiler of the fields. Thou art like the Tartar jeweler's opal, for thy color shifts between the white of milk and the glowing red of wine in the same manner that thy joy shifts between healthful, strengthening repose and enkindling merriment.
With this apostrophe I saluted the evening and reined up my jenny in a small ravine which clambered up toward Jerusalem. The city lay on a height, with its surrounding wall and its cupola-ed white houses, like a four-cornered basket full of eggs. Before the city gate, white-clad widows were sitting motionless at the graves of their husbands, mirrored in a great, quiet, colorless pool.
All at once came the dusk. The road of the ravine became full of people—for the time of the Passover was drawing near.
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At the door of a small cottage, where women were preparing supper, was seated Christ, the Brotherer. Although His face could not be wholly distinguished, because the light of an oil-lamp within the house fell upon his back, yet one could tell at once who He was. His dark hair hung in rough luxuriance down to His knees. His white prophet's garment was frayed, His feet dusty. With His left hand He compressed the nozzle of a leather skin of wine. Whenever one of the friends who were sitting with crossed legs in a circle about him attempted to rise, He pressed him back to his place again and offered him drink. No cares, no thought of labor came to disturb the still evening joy.
Then arose, unobserved, Judas, the Jew of Jews. His well-tended hands and feet were white as marble, and the nails carefully polished. He did not wipe the sweat from his forehead with a fold of his garment as did the other disciples, but drew out always a long Roman handkerchief. His clean-shaven, prosperous-looking face with its small, sedate, intelligent eyes was altogether that of the sober, discreet man of property.
He stole away softly behind the cottage on the road to Jerusalem, while his green head-cloth fluttered among the twisted black olive trees. He smote himself on the forehead and spoke half-aloud, and it was not difficult to divine his thoughts.
What does it lead to, thought he, if one follow this man who forbids us to work and to think of the future, and upon whose head they have finally set a price? Have not I year by year and day by day saved coin after coin? There lack but thirty pieces of silver—but thirty!—and I shall be sitting under my own fig-tree.—
Involuntarily I reached for a stone. Then Christ, the Brotherer, arose in the lighted doorway.
"Thou art still young," he called out to me. "Thy first thought upon thine own fig-tree shall go forth and sell me."
Meanwhile the ravine became so dark that nothing could any longer be distinguished. All sank back into the Orient's indescribable stillness, a stillness that has brought forth prophets. But from that evening I understood them who desire that no man shall possess an own fig-tree.