when he does, it is only to awaken to a reality that will not allow him to forget his dream, even when awake he dreams the same dream night after night, and when asleep, though trying desperately to avoid it, he knows he will encounter that dream again, for it hovers on the threshold between sleep and waking and he must pass it when he enters and when he leaves. This confusion is best defined as remorse. Yet human experience and the practice of communication have shown throughout the ages that definitions are an illusion, like having a speech defect and trying to say love but unable to get the word out, or, better, having a tongue in one's head but unable to feel love.
Mary is pregnant again. No angel disguised as a beggar came knocking at the door this time to announce the child's arrival, no sudden gust of wind swept the heights of Nazareth, no luminous earth was discovered in the ground. Mary told Joseph in the simplest words, I'm with child. She did not say to him, for example, Look into my eyes and see how our second child is shining there, nor did he reply this time, Don't think I hadn't noticed, I was waiting for you to tell me. He just listened, remained silent, and eventually said, Is that so, and carried on planing a piece of wood with apparent indifference, but, then, we know that his thoughts are elsewhere. Mary also knows, since that night of torment when her husband blurted out the secret he had kept to himself, and she was not altogether surprised, she had been expecting something like this after the angel told her in the cave, You will have a thousand cries all around you. A good wife would have said to her husband, Don't fret, what's done is done, and besides, your first duty was to rescue your own child. But Mary has changed and is no longer what one would normally refer to as a good wife, perhaps because she heard the angel utter those grave words that excluded no one, I am not an angel who grants pardons. Had she been allowed to discuss these deep matters with Joseph, who was so well versed in Holy Scripture, he might have pondered the nature of this angel who appeared from nowhere to announce that he did not grant pardons, a statement which seems superfluous, since everyone knows that the power to pardon belongs to God alone. For an angel to say that he does not grant pardons is either meaningless or much too meaningful. An angel of judgment, perhaps, might exclaim, You expect me to forgive you, what a silly idea, I did not come to forgive, I came only to punish. But angels, by definition, leaving aside those cherubim with flaming swords who were posted by the Lord to guard the path to the tree of life lest our first parents or we, their descendants, try to return to steal the fruits, angels, as we were saying, are not vigilantes entrusted with the corrupt albeit socially necessary enforcement of repression. Angels exist to make our lives easier, they protect us when we are about to fall down a well, help us cross the bridge over the precipice, pull us to safety just as we are about to be crushed by a runaway chariot or a car without brakes. An angel worthy of the name could have spared Joseph all this torment simply by appearing in a dream to the fathers of the children of Bethlehem to warn them, Gather your wife and child and flee to Egypt and stay there until I tell you to return, for Herod means to slaughter your child. In this way the children could have all been saved, Jesus hidden in the cave with his parents and the others on their way to Egypt, where they would remain until the same angel returned to tell the fathers, Arise, gather your wife and child and return to Israel, for he who tried to kill your children is dead. Thus the children would return to the places where they came from and where eventually they would meet their deaths at the appointed hour, because angels, however powerful, have their limitations, just like God. After much thought, Joseph might have reached the conclusion that the angel who appeared in the cave was an infernal creature, an agent of Satan disguised this time as a shepherd, and further proof of the weakness and gullibility of women, who can be led astray by a fallen angel. If Mary could speak, if she were less secretive and revealed the details of that strange annunciation, things would be different, Joseph would use other arguments to support his theory, most important, the fact that this so-called angel did not proclaim, I am an angel of the Lord, or, I come in the name of the Lord. He simply said, I am an angel, before adding cautiously, Keep this to yourself, as if afraid for anyone else to know. Some may argue that such details contribute nothing new to our understanding of what is an all-too-familiar story, but as far as this narrator is concerned, it is crucial to know, when interpreting past and future events, whether the angel came from heaven or from hell. Between angels of light and angels of darkness there are differences not just of form but also of essence, substance, and content, and while it is true that whoever created the former also created the latter, He subsequently attempted to correct His mistake.
Mary, like Joseph, but for different reasons, often looks distracted, her expression becomes blank, her hands drop in the middle of some task, her gestures are suddenly interrupted, she stares into the distance, not so surprising for a woman in her condition, were it not for the various thoughts that occupy her mind and that can be summed up in the following question, Why did the angel announce the birth of Jesus yet say nothing of this second child. Mary looks at her firstborn crawling on all fours as children do at that age, she studies him and tries to perceive a special trait, some mark or sign, a star on his forehead, a sixth finger on his hand, but she sees a child like any other, who slobbers, gets dirty, and cries, the only difference being that he is her son. His hair is black like that of his parents, his irises are already losing that whitish tinge inaccurately called milky and assuming their natural, inherited color, a dark brown which gradually turns a somber green if one can so describe a color, but these features are hardly unique, important only when the child belongs to us, or, as in this case, to Mary. Within weeks he will be making his first attempts to stand up and walk, he will fall on his hands countless times, stay there staring, lifting his head with some difficulty as he hears his mother say, Come here, come here, my child. And he will begin to feel the urge to speak, sounds will form in his throat, at first he will not know what to do with them, he will get them mixed up with sounds he already knows and makes, such as gurgling and crying, until he begins to realize that they must be articulated in a different and more deliberate way, and he will move his lips as his father and mother do, until he succeeds in pronouncing his first word, perhaps da or dada or daddy, or perhaps even mummy, in any case after that little Jesus will not have to poke the forefinger of his right hand into the palm of his left hand if his mother and her neighbors ask him for the hundredth time, Where does the hen lay her egg. This is just another of those indignities to which a human being is subjected, trained like a lapdog to respond to certain sounds, a tone of voice, a whistle, or the crack of a whip. Now Jesus is able to answer that the hen can lay her egg wherever she wishes so long as she does not lay it in the palm of his hand. Mary looks at her little son, sighs, downhearted that the angel is not likely to return. You will not see me again for a while, he told her, but if he were to appear now, she would not be as intimidated as before, she would ply the angel with questions until he gave her an answer. Already a mother and expecting her second child, Mary is no innocent lamb, she has learned, to her cost, what suffering, danger, and worry mean, with all that experience on her side she can easily tip the scales to her advantage. It would not be enough for the angel to reply, May the Lord never allow you to see your child as you see me now, with nowhere to lay my head. First, the angel would have to identify this Lord in whose name he claimed to speak, secondly, convince her that he told the truth when he said he had no place to lay his head, which seemed unlikely for an angel unless he meant it only in his role as beggar, thirdly, what future did those dark, threatening words augur for her son, and finally, what was the mystery surrounding that luminous earth buried near the door, where a strange plant had grown after their return from Bethlehem, nothing but stalk and leaves, which they had given up pruning after trying to pull it up by the roots, only to have it reappear with even greater vigor. Two of the elders of the synagogue, Zacchaeus and Dothan, came to inspect the phenomenon, and although they knew little about botany, they were in agreement that the seed must have been in the mysterious soil and then sprouted at the right moment, for as Zacchaeus observed, Such is the law of the Lord of life. Once she became accustomed to this stubborn plant, Mary decided it added a festive touch at the entrance to the house, while Joseph, still suspicious, moved his carpenter's bench to another part of the yard rather than have to look at the thing. He cut it back with an ax and saw, poured boiling water over it, even scattered burning coals around the stalk, but superstition prevented him from taking a spade and digging up the bowl of luminous earth that had been the cause of so much trouble. This was how matters stood when their second child, whom they named James, was born.
Over the next few years there were not many changes in the family, apart from the arrival of more children, including two daughters, while the parents lost the last vestiges of youth. In the case of Mary that was not surprising, for we know how childbearing, and she had borne many children, gradually saps whatever freshness and beauty a woman possesses, causing her face and body to age and wither, suffice it to say that after James came Lisa, after Lisa came Joseph, after Joseph came Judas, after Judas came Simon, then Lydia, then Justus, then Samuel, and if any more followed, they perished without trace. Children are the pride and joy of their parents, as the saying goes, and Mary did her utmost to appear contented, but after carrying for months on end all those fruits that greedily consumed her strength, she often felt impatient, resentful, but in those days it would never have occurred to her to blame Joseph, let alone Almighty God who governs the life and death of His creatures and assures us that the very hairs of our heads are counted. Joseph had little understanding of the begetting of children, apart from the practical rudiments, which reduce all enigmas to one simple fact, namely, that if a man and woman
