THE GOSPEL OF JUDITH ISCARYOT - ACT III

Scene Four - HAKI RETURNS TO GETHSEMANE

(The stage is illuminated. We are in the garden in Gethsemane again, and it is almost dawn. Haki arrives from the back right, running. He is out of breath and panting, obviously from having run all the way back there from the Passover.)

H AKI: Judith! Where are you? (pause while he looks around.) Judith!! Where can she be?

(Haki gets a torchlight, which he lights, and begins flashing around the garden, searching for Judith.)

HAKI: Gone. No trace of her! The Rasans must have seized her. It was to be expected after all that happened. I should never have left her alone. Wait! The Earth is sticky. (He examines it). It is blood!

(Haki panics and frantically moves from one patch of blood to another, until he arrives at the tree in the background where Judith was last standing and then stumbles over the hole where her body is.)

HAKI: Judith! What the hell are you doing here?

(Haki picks up Judith's body in his arms. She lies motionless in his arms. He takes her hand to feel for her pulse. As he does so, he sees the bloody gash in the wrist covered with dried blood.)

HAKI: My God, she's dead! She has killed herself. How could you? Why? She must have planned it, the way she dug this hole, and then spilled her blood all over this garden she loved so, and all this while I was celebrating the Passover Seder rituals, singing and playing games, while you were slaughtering yourself like a Paschal lamb.

Why did I leave you alone? You opened this sucking mouth into the earth, a womb to enter into, forever.

What pain, what loss. How much I would have held and entered you. I can't stand the pain! There's nothing left for me but to join you in your grave. At least that way I can stay with you and we will be together.

(Haki lets out a loud guttural cry, followed by several more, and then he cradles Judith's body in his arms and goes down the narrow hole, crying. But after a time he lets go of the body and jumps out.)

HAKI: What am I doing? I'm not guilty! Why should I want to die? This is not what your act was all about. It was about life! And about love! You poured out your heart's blood to grow the branch of Love of the Tree of Life. And for the sake of your loving sacrifice, I cannot join you in the grave. I know I must stay around and find how to add to my own gift to grow its other brach - the branch of Laugh! But how can I laugh when my heart is broken?

(Haki gets up wearily at his feet, steps with shaking feet to the olive tree and clutches its trunk for support, then he speaks again)

HAKI: No, I cannot bury myself alive, or do as you did, Judith. I must cling to the Tree of Life, Where I can be hanged, but also be revived. Of its three branches - of Love, on the right, of Laugh, in its middle and of Law on its left, I must face the Law now and stand to judgement.

(Haki turns towards the olive tree and speaks to it in a folk tune, like "Tom Dooly", or "The Hanging Tree" or a talking blues)

Yes I should be hanged on you

My dear old trusted Olive Tree,

Nailed to your left side, the Left Line of Law,

For having left my one, for betraying Love.

Oh ageless tree, pass judice on what I did to Judith.

Confront me with all the deeds she left me with

With all the marks on the holy history of humankind,

Left by the lives of the People that bear her name.

For on this tree forever rests my case, and Adam's

In the trial opened when we took of the Trees of Eden,

And my case was fixed when father Isaac left his father,

Remaining alone, along the way to Mount Moriah.

First I must find if her death was my fault,

To my failing to love and to care and to show it.

Now I must hold to what's left of you,

Let me stand up to face you, Judith and confess..

(Stretching up his left arm, Haki grabs the branch to his right. Holding on to it, he pivots to face Judith's grave. He then grabs with his right arm the right branch of the tree and as his legs tremble, he hangs by the two branches in a crucifix fashion and his head drops to face the grave below.)

HAKI: You must have been so alone and afraid, entering the Messiah Machine. It appears to provide the company of those nearest you. But I know the truth. It is the loneliest place on earth. I've certainly failed in its design. I should have integrated fun and games into its procedures. And you must have felt that I betrayed you to the machine. Why was I so blind! And

{I should have known how, on entering a place of contemplation, a frightened mind blow up to monstrous excesses those memories and feelings that prevailed on entering it. The Messiah Machine only seems to give external stimuli, in fact it only feeds back and replays the mind, and memories are revived, to lead on to acts that would not occur to calmer minds. If I knew it then, I could have programmed the machine not to lead to such grave determination.}

But no, the machine is not the issue, the issue is that I failed you and your real emotions. You had to make a momentous decision, and I abandoned you. You entered the feedback machine scared, lonely and betrayed, and my machine went on to amplify that a hundredfold. These feelings were not allayed by me. That was my responsibility.

I love you so much now. But what is the use? {It would have been so much better had I been capable of love when you were still alive. I was too indulgent.} I was afraid of getting caught up in love again. But now? I would risk anything! I will love you as long as I live. But now life must go on...

(A bird cries suddenly in the garden. H aki is startled. Then the cry of the muezzin is heard. Haki loosen his grip and drops from the tree.)

HAKI: I feel you are still here! This is your garden, where real trees grow, where the bees hum and the birds sing. You annointed this earth with your own blood, your life juice, your Mann, to make a connection from earth to heaven. You made this place a gate of heaven. From the earthly Jerusalem to the Heavenly Jerusalem, from the trees here, to the Tree of Life. And from the birds that sing here to the birds of heaven singing in the Heavenly Jerusalem. This muezzin joins the cry of the bird with a recollection of the old Hegira. I shall connect your memory with the future HEJERA - the Heavenly Jerusalem Association. Only I am left. But I will carry your memory, and soon there will be others to witness your sacrifice, to be blessed by it.

(The spotlights illuminate the tree, showing three figures sitting on its three boughs, dressed in green with leaf-like fringes and holding musical instruments. The player on the right-hand bough holds a saxophon, the player on the left-hand bough bits a large Arabic drum, while the player on the middle bough strums the guitar (or fiddles). The drum is beating in a strong heart-beat, getting stronger as the other instruments join in a sweeping tune, accompanying Haki.

HAKI (singing, a tune for "What use is my blood", Ps.30:10): ***

So I appeal to your right side of mercy,

Please explain it to the entire tree.

That I shall not atone my guilt,

By going with her down the pit,

Nor will it bring much benefit

To pit all my wits in the grave.

For I can best atone by laughing,

And more restore by making games,

To be true to you and to my name,

Let me develope the HEJERA Games.

To let us not just to repent and resent

But to re-mend the whole world..

( Haki goes into a frenzy.)

HAKI: (singing. The tune develop to that of "Something is growing..")

I am alive, without you love, I am alive,

and I shall live to have the last laugh.

I love you Judith, but the point is not

To join you now below the Earth you loved.

There is something coming from the earth,

Can it be your blood or your spirit, Judith?

Some formless unknown thing is rising

from the sticky earth into my head.

Something is growing and seething within,

something unseen wants a form.

(Haki starts pacing in the garden, retracing Judith's blood-stained path, talking to the earth and to the trees in his path, in a demented way.)

HAKI (speaking oratorically):

As I retrace your blood-stained steps,

I follow not just a blood of death ,

It is also the blood of birth.

This piece of earth you bought,

Is the womb to which you returned,

It must be a gateway to the other world,

Our gateway to the Heavenly Jerusalem.

I feel as I were pregnant, ready to face labors,

And your fertile garden is really a womb.

To help the true Messiah to be born,

As we'll make this Earth our gift to God.

(On the tree, right at the juncture of the three large branches appears the ascended figure of Judith.)

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: Oh, listen to me Adamah!

Take the body I offered you and be fruitful with it.

With grains and grapes to use for sacraments,

we'll make bread and wine with our own hands.

(Haki is becoming ecstatic and, at the same time he begins to laugh louder and louder. We hear more music, "Oh, my Darling", and Haki joins in.)

HAKI (Singing):

You have suffered, you have labored,

And conceived the missing link,

How living Earth and busy cities,

Shall be wed in harmony.

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: our little acre of urban land,

Can give us enough to make the bread and wine

For weekly sacraments of a circle of friends,

Who are all otherwise diversely occupied.

HAKI: We'll be no slaves of soil and toil,

But free urbanites who nurture culture.

We will give with love of our time

And work together with the Adamah.

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: I see children growing there,

Sharing the work with interest and wonder,

Watching how plants grow and fruits mature,

Learning that things take time to ripen.

HAKI: I see us sitting in the sweet shade, growing old,

Under the vines and fig trees we have planted,

Confidently watching how, each new spring,

These trees renew their leaves and fruits.

BOTH: Something is glowing, something is growing,

Seething within to be born.

Something between us, something that's in us,

Something unseen wants a form.

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: This little acre of urban land,

Is at the heart of the city, or maybe a gland,

Pulsing with the rhythms of the Adamah,

In waves of vegetation, first green then brown.

HAKI: Tying our time with the rhythms of the Earth,

Of sowing and collecting our various crops.

Pouring our home-made wines on Saturday night,

In communal meals with each season's fruits.

BOTH: Something is glowing, something is growing,

Seething within to be born.

Something between us, something that's in us,

Something unseen wants a form.

HAKI: These heartbeats of mother Adamah we feel,

Will realign one person with another,

And help to synchronize our rushed activities,

To match and unify our crossed divers-cities.

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: Feeding migrating birds stopping by,

Having people from near and far visiting our garden.

Collecting the hybrid flowers developed by friends,

Is much nicer than rooms full of fanciful gadgets.

BOTH: Something is glowing, something is growing,

Seething within to be born.

Something between us, something that's in us,

Something unseen wants a form.

JUDITH'S SPECTRE: From our garden, many gardens will spring up,

Each circle of people, a cell among cells,

Which produces a new man fit for one's task,

Many cells all incubi for the new world.

HAKI: On the pattern of this city-cell we shall form,

a whole matrix to raise the true Messiah within,

Nurtured by the minds and hands of men,

And aided as well by the Messiah Machine.

BOTH: Something is glowing, something is growing,

Seething within to be born.

Something between us, something that's in us,

Something unseen wants a form.

HAKI: But you will not see any of it,

Nor will our children unborn,

For you are dead, returned to dust,

And (y)our child interred along.

Yet though it pains much, this won't matter,

For I shall father all what our garden yields,

And to whoever shares in it you will be mother,

Thus we shall live as family to realize this Dream.

(Haki falls on the grave and clutches and caresses and kisses it as though it were Judith herself, and not her grave, then he rises and puts his lips to the feet of the ascended figure.)

Seed of my mind, to the womb of your tomb.

Oh childless mother, may here be conceived,

And let the true Messiah grow from this place,

As our hybreed flower, the fruit of our love.

BOTH: Something is glowing, something is growing,

Seething within to be born.

Something between us, something that's in us,

Something unseen wants a form.

(The stage grows dark.)