Moorcock, Michael - Behold the Man

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author is an iconoclast. Say that. Then again, maybe you're an

atheist, and a sophisticated one, and you might say that the author

is kicking a dead dog. Say that. Christian or atheist, though, if

these be your initial reactions, consider the story a bit more closely;

it may just be that both reactions are wrong.

Michael Moorcock is a wondrous man, twice the size of any of us,

with a beard like Father Time and the ability to practically kill

himself for that which he loves and believes in. He edits the British

periodical New Worlds, which has been the vehicle for some very

fine tellings since he took it over. He is a good editor, and a man

who would literally give you his shirt, if you were to stop him on the

street and demonstrate that you really needed it. He is a

professional human being. What more can I say? Plenty. I've met

Michael Moorcock a couple times, and because of this I know what I

am saying when I say that there are very few people who could

spend an afternoon with him and not come away liking him.

Read his story very carefully, please.

BEHOLD THE MAN

He has no material power as the god-emperors had; he has only

a following of desert people and fishermen. They tell him he is a

god; he believes them. The followers of Alexander said: "He is

unconquerable, therefore he is a god.' The followers of this man do

not think at all; he was their act of spontaneous creation. Now he

leads them, this mad-man called Jesus of Nazareth.

And he spoke, saying unto them: Yeah verily I was Kari Glogauer

and now I am Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. And it was so.

The time machine was a sphere full of milky fluid in which the

traveler floated, enclosed in a rubber suit, breathing through a

mask attached to a hose leading to the wall of the machine. The

he was saying.

His body became numb and he shivered. His passage through

time had not been easy and even the thick fluid had not wholly

protected him, though it had doubtless saved his life. Some ribs

were certainly broken. Painfully, he straightened his arms and legs

and began to crawl over the slippery plastic towards the crack in

the machine. He could see harsh sunlight, a sky like shimmering

steel. He pulled himself half-way through the crack, closing his eyes

as the full strength of the sunlight struck then). He lost

consciousness.

Christmas term, 1949. He was nine years old, born two years

after his father had reached England from Austria. The other

children were screaming with laughter in the gravel of the

playground. The game had begun earnestly enough and somewhat

nervously Karl had joined in in the same spirit. Now he was crying.

"Let me down! Please, Mervyn, stop it!"

They had tied him with his arms spreadeagled against the wire-

netting of the playground fence. It bulged outwards under his

weight and one of the posts threatened to come loose. Mervyn

Williams, the boy who had proposed the game, began, to shake the

post so that Karl was swung heavily back and forth on the netting.

"Stop it!"

He saw that his cries only encouraged them and he clenched his

teeth, becoming silent.

He slumped, pretending unconsciousness; the school ties they

had used as bonds cut into his wrists. He heard the children's

voices drop.

"Is he all right?" Molly Turner was whispering.

"He's only kidding." Williams replied uncertainly.

He felt them untying him, their fingers fumbling with the knots.

Deliberately, he sagged, then fell to his knees, grazing them on the

"He's not a strong boy like you, Williams. You should have

known better."

"I'm sorry, sir. I'm really sorry." Williams sounded as if he were

crying.

Karl felt himself lifted; felt the triumph. . . .

He was being carried along. His head and side were so painful

that he felt sick. He had had no chance to discover where exactly

the time machine had brought him, but, turning his head now, he

could see by the way the man on his right was dressed that he was

at least m the Middle East. He had meant to land in the year 29

A.D. in the wilderness beyond Jerusalem, near Bethlehem. Were

they taking him to Jerusalem now?

He was on a stretcher that was apparently made of animal skins;

this indicated that he was probably in the past, at any rate. Two

men were carrying the stretcher on their shoulders. Others walked

on both sides. There was a smell of sweat and animal fat and a

musty smell he could not identify. They were walking towards a line

of hills in the distance. He winced as the stretcher lurched and the

pain in his side increased. For the second time he passed out.

He woke up briefly, hearing voices. They were speaking what was

evidently some form of Aramaic. It was night, perhaps, for it seemed

very dark. They were no longer moving. There was straw beneath

him. He was relieved. He slept.

In those days came John the Baptist preaching in the wilderness

of Judaea, And saying, Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at

hand. For this is he that was spoken of by the prophet Esaias,

saying. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way

of the Lord, make his paths straight. And the same John had his

raiment of camel's hair, and a leathern girdle about his loins; and

his meat was locusts and wild honey. Then went out to him

Jerusalem, and all Iudaea, and all the region round about Jordan,

He wondered if he could form a sentence they might understand.

His knowledge of written Aramaic was good, but he was not sure of

certain pronunciations.

He cleared his throat. "Where be this place?"

They frowned, shaking their heads and lowering their water jars.

"I seek a Nazarene Jesus. . . ."

"Nazarene. Jesus." One of the men repeated the words, but they

did not seem to mean anything to him. He shrugged. The other,

however, only repeated the word Nazarene, speaking it slowly as if it

had some special significance for him. He muttered a few words to

the other man and went towards the entrance of the room.

Karl Glogauer continued to try to say something the remaining

man would understand.

"What year doth the Roman Emperor sit in Rome?"

It was a confusing question to ask, he realized. He knew Christ

had been crucified in the fifteenth year of Tiberius' reign, and that

was why he had asked the question. He tried to phrase it better.

"How many year doth Tiberius rule?"

"Tiberius?" The man frowned.

Glogauer's ear was adjusting to the accent now and he tried to

simulate it better. "Tiberius. The emperor of the Romans. How many

years has he ruled?"

"How many?" The man shook his head. "I know not."

At least Glogauer had managed to make himself understood.

"Where is this place?" he asked.

"It is the wilderness beyond Machaerus," the man replied.

"Know you not that?"

Machaerus lay to the southeast of Jerusalem, on the other side

of the Dead Sea. There was no doubt that he was in the past and

that the period was sometime in the reign of Tiberius, for the man

had recognized the name easily enough. His companion was now

returning, bringing with him a

way. He had intended to disguise himself as a traveler from

Syria, hoping that the local accents would be different enough

to explain his own unfamiliarity with the language. He

decided that it was best to stick to this story and hope for

the best.

"I am from the north," he said.

"Not from Egypt?" the big man asked. It -was as if he had

expected Glogauer to be from there. Glogauer decided that if

this was what the big man thought, he might just as well

agree to it.

"I came out of Egypt two years since," he said.

The big man nodded, apparently satisfied. "So you are

a magus from Egypt. That is what we thought. And your

name is Jesus, and you are the Nazarene."

"I seek Jesus, the Nazarene," Glogauer said.

"Then what is your name?" The man seemed disappointed.

Glogauer could not give his own name. It would sound

too strange to them. On impulse, he gave his father's first

name. "Emmanuel," he said.

The man nodded, again satisfied. "Emmanuel."

Glogauer realized belatedly that the choice of name had

been an unfortunate one in the circumstances, for Emmanuel

meant in Hebrew "God with us" and doubtless had a mystic

significance for his questioner.

"And what is your name?" he asked.

The man straightened up, looking broodingly down on

Glogauer. "You do not know me? You have not heard of

John, called the Baptist?"

Glogauer tried to hide his surprise, but evidently John the

Baptist .saw that his name was familiar. He nodded his shaggy

bead. "You do know of me, I see. Well, magus, now I must

decide, eh?"

be. I say to the people, 'Be ready for that day when ye shall

take up the sword to do Adonai's will.' The unrighteous

know that they will perish on this day, and they would

destroy me."

Despite the intensity of his words, John's tone was matter

of fact. There was no hint of insanity or fanaticism in his

face or bearing. He sounded most of all like an Anglican

vicar reading a sermon whose meaning for him had lost its

edge.

The essence of what he said, Karl Glogauer realized, was

that he was arousing the people to throw out the Romans

and their puppet Herod and establish a more "righteous"

regime. The attributing of this plan to "Adonai" (one of the

spoken names of Jahweh and meaning The Lord) seemed,

as many scholars had guessed in the 20th century, a means

of giving the plan extra weight. In a world where politics

and religion, even in the west, were inextricably bound to-

gether, it was necessary to ascribe a supernatural origin to

the plan.

Indeed, Glogauer thought, it was more than likely that

John believed his idea had been inspired by God, for the

Greeks on the other side of the Mediterranean had not yet

stopped arguing about the origins of inspirationwhether it

originated in a man's head or was placed there by the gods.

That John accepted him as an Egyptian magician of some

kind did not surprise Glogauer particularly, either. The cir-

cumstances of his arrival must have seemed extraordinarily

miraculous and at the same time acceptable, particularly to a

sect like the Essenes who practiced self-mortification and

starvation and must be quite used to seeing visions in this hot

wilderness. There was no doubt now that these people were

the neurotic Essenes, whose ritual washingbaptismand

Glogauer sank back on the wet straw. He was without

doubt in a limestone cave, and the atmosphere in the cave

was surprisingly humid. It must be very hot outside. He felt

drowsy.

Five years in the past. Nearly two thousand in the future.

Lying in the hot, sweaty bed with Monica. Once again, an-

other attempt to make normal love had metamorphosed into

the performance of minor aberrations which seemed to

satisfy her better than anything else.

Their real courtship and fulfillment was yet to come. As

usual, it would be verbal. As usual, it would find its climax

in argumentative anger.

"I suppose you're going to tell me you're not satisfied

again." She accepted the lighted cigarette he handed to her

in the darkness.

"I'm all right," he said.

There was silence for a while as they smoked.

Eventually, and in spite of knowing what the result would

be if he did so, he found himself talking.

"It's ironic, isn't it?" he began.

He waited for her reply. She would delay for a little

while yet.

"What is?" she said at last.

"All this. You spend all day trying to help sexual neurotics

to become normal. You spend your nights doing what they

do."

"Not to the same extent. You know it's all a matter of

degree."

"So you say."

He turned his head and looked at her face in the starlight

from the window. She was a gaunt-featured redhead, with

looking for a neurotic mess."

Both were amateur psychiatristsshe a psychiatric social

worker, he merely a reader, a dabbler, though he had done

a year's study some time ago when he had planned to be-

come a psychiatrist. They used the terminology of psychia-

try freely. They felt happier if they could name something.

He rolled away from her, groping for the ashtray on the

bedside table, catching a glance of himself in the dressing

table mirror. He was a sallow, intense, moody Jewish book-

seller, with a head full of images and unresolved obsessions,

a body full of emotions. He always lost these arguments

with Monica. Verbally, she was the dominant one. This kind

of exchange often seemed to him more perverse than their

lovemaking, where usually at least his role was masculine.

Essentially, he realized, he was passive, masochistic, in-

decisive. Even his anger, which came frequently, was im-

potent. Monica was ten years older than he was, ten years

more bitter. As an individual, of course, she had far more

dynamism than he had; but as a psychiatric social worker

she had had just as many failures. She plugged on, becoming

increasingly cynical on the surface but still, perhaps, hoping

for a few spectacular successes with patients. They tried to

do too much, that was the trouble, he thought. The priests

in the confessional supplied a panacea; the psychiatrists tried

to cure, and most of the time they failed. But at least they

tried, he thought, and then wondered if that was, after all,

a virtue.

"I did look at myself," he said.

Was she sleeping? He turned. Her wary eyes were still

open, looking out of the window.

"I did look at myself," he repeated. "The way Jung did.

'How can I help those persons if I am myself a fugitive and

He opened the packet on the bedside table and put two

cigarettes in his mouth, lighting them and handing one to

her.

Almost abstractedly, he noticed that the tension was in-

creasing. The argument was, as ever, pointless. But it was

not the argument that was the important thing; it was simply

the expression of the essential relationship. He wondered if

that was in any way important, either.

"You're not telling the truth." He realized that there was

no stopping now that the ritual was in full swing.

"I'm telling the practical truth. I've no compulsion to give

up my work. I've no wish to be a failure. . . ."

"Failure? You're more melodramatic than I am."

"You're too earnest, Karl. You want to get out of yourself

a bit."

He sneered. "If I were you, I'd give up my work, Monica.

You're no more suited for it than I was."

She shrugged. "You're a petty bastard."

"I'm not jealous of you, if that's what you think. You'll

never understand what I'm looking for."

Her laugh was artificial, brittle. "Modem man in search

of a soul, eh? Modern man in search of a crutch, I'd say.

And you can take that any way you like."

"We're destroying the myths that make the world go

round."

"Now you say 'And what are we putting in their place?'

You're stale and stupid, Karl. You've never looked rationally

at anythingincluding yourself."

"What of it? You say the myth is unimportant."

"The reality that creates it is important."

"Jung knew that the myth can also create the reality."

"Which shows what a muddled old fool he was."

We- Protestants must sooner or later face this question:

Are we to understand the "imitation of Christ" in the sense

that we should copy his life and, if I may use the expression,

ape his stigmata; or in the deeper sense that we are to live

our own proper lives as truly as he lived his in all its im-

plications? It is no easy matter to live a life that is modeled

on Christ's, but it is unspeakably harder to live one's own

life as truly as Christ lived his. Anyone who did this would

. . . be misjudged, derided, tortured and crucified. . . . A

neurosis is a dissociation of personality.

(Jung; Modem Man in Search of a Soul)

For a month, John the Baptist was away and Glogauer

lived with the Essenes, finding it surprisingly easy, as his

ribs mended, to join in their daily life. The Essenes' town-

ship consisted of a mixture of single-story houses, built of

limestone and clay brick, and the caves that were to be found

on both sides of the shallow valley. The Essenes shared their

goods in common and this particular sect had wives, though

many Essenes led completely monastic lives. The Essenes

were also pacifists, refusing to own or to make weapons

yet this sect plainly tolerated the warlike Baptist. Perhaps

their hatred of the Romans overcame their principles. Per-

haps they were not sure of John's entire intention. Whatever

the reason for their toleration, there was little doubt that

John the Baptist was virtually their leader.

The life of the Essenes consisted of ritual bathing three

times a day, of prayer and of work. The work was not dif-

ficult. Sometimes Glogauer guided a plough pulled by two

other members of the sect; sometimes he looked after the

goats that were allowed to graze on the hillsides. It was a

peaceful, ordered life, and even the unhealthy aspects were

so much a matter of routine that Glogauer hardly noticed

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authorisaniconoclast.Saythat.Thenagain,maybeyou'reanatheist,andasophisticatedone,andyoumightsaythattheauthoriskickingadeaddog.Saythat.Christianoratheist,though,ifthesebeyourinitialreactions,considerthestoryabitmoreclosely;itmayjustbethatbothreactionsarewrong.MichaelMoorcockisawondrousman,twicethesiz...

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Moorcock, Michael - Behold the Man

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