Free Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist Page B

there were so many who made out they were the Messiah but who weren’t at all. Why should it be the right one this particular time? But she listened to the madmen.
    Now here she lay, battered and dead for his sake. The right one?
    Was he the right one? The saviour of the world? The saviour of all mankind? Then why didn’t he help her down there in the stoning-pit? Why did he let her be stoned for his sake? If he was a saviour, why didn’t he save!
    He could have done that all right if he’d wanted to. But he liked suffering, both his own and others’. And he liked people to witness for him. “Now I have witnessed for thee, as thou didst say I should do” … “Risen from hell in order to witness for thee” …
    No, he didn’t like that crucified man. He hated him. It was he who had killed her, had demanded this sacrifice of her and seen to it that she didn’t escape it. For he had been present down there, she had seen him and gone towards him with outstretched hands for help, had snatched at his mantle—but not a finger had he lifted to help her. And he was supposed to be the son of God! God’s loving son! Everyone’s Saviour!
    He himself had knifed that man who had cast the first stone. He, Barabbas, had done that much at least. True, it meant nothing. The stone was already cast, it had already hit her. There was absolutely nopoint in it. But all the same … He had knifed him, all the same!
    He wiped his hand across his wry mouth and smiled scornfully to himself. Then he shrugged and got to his feet. Lifted up his burden, impatiently, as though he had begun to tire of it, and started off again.
    He passed the old man’s hermit’s-cave, which he easily recognized from that time when he had come here by chance. Then he tried to remember where they had gone when the old man showed him the way to the child’s grave. They had had the lepers’ caves on their right and the desert fanatics’ straight in front, but they hadn’t gone as far as that. Yes, he recognized it quite well, though it looked different now in the moonlight. They had been walking down here towards the hollow while the old man told him that the child was still-born because it had been cursed in the womb and that he had buried it at once as everything still-born is unclean. Cursed be the fruit of thy loins … The mother had not been able to be present, but later on she had often sat there by the grave.… The old man had talked the whole time.…
    It should be somewhere here, surely? Shouldn’t it? Yes, here was the stone slab.…
    Lifting it up, he laid her down beside the child, who was already completely withered. Arranged her torn body, as though to make sure she would be comfortable, and finally threw a glance at the face and the scar in the upper lip which didn’t matter any more. Then he replaced the slab and sat down and looked out over the desert. He sat thinking that it resembled the realm of death, to whichshe now belonged; he had carried her into it. Once there, it made no difference really where one rested, but now she lay beside her withered child and nowhere else. He had done what he could for her, he thought, stroking his red beard and smiling scornfully.
    Love one another …

W hen Barabbas came back to his own people he was so changed that they scarcely recognized him. Their companions who had been down in Jerusalem had said that he seemed a bit queer; and no wonder either, being in prison for so long and then so nearly crucified. It would soon wear off, they thought. But it had not done so, not even now, so long afterwards. What lay at the back of it all was more than they could say, but he was no longer himself.
    He had always been queer, of course. They had never really understood him or known just where they were with him, but this was something else. He was just like a stranger to them and he too must have thought they were strangers he had never seen before. When they explainedtheir plans he paid hardly any