Later, he can’t remember the first couple of days. The last thing he remembers is that face turned to him, long and sorrowful and bloody under its mocking crown, the forked beard streaked with white and draggled with sweat, and that voice saying, may you know no rest until I see you again. It wasn’t angry, and that kills him at first. He was so mild about it, maybe a little sad, no stronger emotions as he stripped the leather apron from him with those words and drove him out into the world. After that – nothing. He might have slept.

When he starts to take an interest in things again, he’s somewhere in Asia Minor. He doesn’t speak the language and everyone he sees chases after him and throws stones at him. “Please,” he shouts, again and again. “Please!” He doesn’t know what he’s asking for – forgiveness, maybe, or maybe just understanding.

It takes him a hundred and fifty years to get back to any place where he speaks the language. By that time, of course, everyone’s dead and long buried; he spends a day walking down streets he only half-remembers before he’s driven out of Jerusalem again, wailing and gnashing his teeth.