Free Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist Page A

to grope his way. Right at the bottom he found her lacerated body, half buried under stones that had been cast quite needlessly, long after she was dead. It was so small and light that he hardly felt it in his arms as he carried it up the steep slope and away into the darkness.
    He carried it hour after hour. Now and then he would stop and rest for a while, with the dead girl lying in front of him on the ground. The clouds had blown away and the stars were shining; after a time the moon rose too, so that everything was visible. He sat looking at her face, which oddly enough was hurt very little. Nor was it much paler than when she was alive, for this was hardly possible.
    It was quite transparent, and the scar in the upper lip had become so small, as though it didn’t in the least matter. And it didn’t either, not now.
    He thought of the time when he had hit on the idea of saying that he loved her. When he had taken her—no, he put that out of his mind … But the time when he had said that he loved her, so that she would not give him away but do just as he wanted—how her face had lighted up. She was not used to hearing that. It seemed to make her happy in some way to hear it, though she must have known it was a lie. Or hadn’t she known? In any case he had got things the way he wanted them; she had come every day with what he needed to keep himself alive, and he had got her, of course—more than he wanted really. He had made do with her because there was no other woman to hand, though her snuffling voice had got on his nerves and he had told her not to talk more than she had to. And when at last his leg was healed he had gone off again, of course. What else was he to do?
    He looked out across the desert opening up before him, lifeless and arid, lit by the moon’s dead light. It extended like this in all directions, he knew. He was familiar with it without having to look about him.
    Love one another …
    He glanced at her face again. Then lifting her up he resumed his way over the mountains.
    He was following a camel- and mule-track that led from Jerusalem across the Desert of Judah to the land of the Moabites. There was nothing to be seen of the trackitself; but droppings from animals, and occasionally the skeleton of one of them picked clean by the vultures, showed where it twisted and turned. When he had been walking for more than half the night the path began to lead downwards and he knew that he had not much further to go. He made his way down through one or two narrow clefts and then out as though into another desert, but even wilder and more desolate. The track continued across it, but he sat down to rest for a while first, tired after the strenuous descent with his burden. Anyway, he was nearly there now.
    He wondered whether he would be able to find it himself or whether he would have to ask the old man. He would much prefer not to look him up, would rather do all this alone. The old man might not understand why he had brought her here. Did he understand himself, for that matter? Was there any point in it? Yes, she belonged here, he thought. That is, if she belonged anywhere at all? Down in Gilgal she would never be allowed to rest, and in Jerusalem she would have been thrown to the dogs. He didn’t think she ought to be. Though what did it matter really? What difference did it make to her? What good did it do her to be brought here where she had lived as an exile and where she could find rest in the same grave as the child? None at all. But he felt he wanted to do it all the same. It is not so easy to please the dead.
    What was the use of her having gone off like that to Jerusalem? Of joining those crazy desert fanatics who raved about the coming of a great Messiah and said theymust all make their way to the Lord’s city. Had she listened to the old man instead, this would never have happened to her. The old man wasn’t going to unsettle himself; he said he had done it so many times for nothing, that