He goes up and down the hills around Jerusalem. And his eyes are irresistibly attracted towards Golgotha. And twice from afar he sees the procession wind uphill. He looks and howls.
It is now on the top. Judas also is on top of a little hill covered with olive-trees. He has gone in by opening a rustic paling, as if he were the owner or at least well acquainted with the place. I am under the impression that Judas did not have much consideration for other people's property.
Standing upright under an olive-tree on the edge of a terrace, he looks towards Golgotha. He sees the crosses being erected and he realises that Jesus has been crucified. He cannot bear to see or hear. But his mental derangement or an act of witchcraft by Satan make him see and hear as if he were on the top of Calvary.
He looks and looks like one bewitched. He struggles: «No! No! Don't look at me. Don't speak to me. I cannot bear it. Die, die, You cursed one! Let death close those eyes that frighten me, that mouth that curses me. But I also curse You. Because You did not save me.»
His face is so troubled that one cannot look at it. Two fine streams of slaver run down from his howling mouth. The cheek that was bitten is livid and swollen, and so his face looks twisted. His sticky hair, his very dark beard that has grown on his cheeks during these hours, make his face look dismal. And his eyes!... They roll, are squint and phosphorescent. The eyes of a real demon.
He tears away from his waist the cord of thick red wool that encircles it three times. He tests its solidity by winding it round an olive-tree and pulling it with all his strength. It resists. It is solid.
He chooses a suitable olive-tree. Here it is. This one, protruding beyond the terrace with its ruffled foliage, is all right. He climbs on the tree. He fastens a noose solidly to the strongest branch hanging out over the empty space. He has already tied a slip-knot. He looks at Golgotha for the last time. He then puts his head into the slip-knot. He now seems to have two red necklaces round the bottom part of his neck. He sits on the terrace. Then with a jerk he lets himself slip into the empty space.
The knot squeezes his throat. He struggles for some moments. He rolls his eyes strangely, he becomes black with suffocation, he opens his mouth, the veins of his neck swell and become black. He kicks the air four or five times in his last convulsions. Then his mouth opens and his dark slobbery tongue hangs out, his eye -balls remain uncovered, protruding, showing the whitish globes stained with blood. The hides disappear in the upper part. He is dead.
The strong wind, that has risen with the impending storm, makes the macabre pendulum swing and whirl like a horrible spider hanging from the thread of a cobweb.
The vision ends thus. (
The Poem of the Man-God: Vol. V, ch. 601, pp. 292-295)
