TESTAMENT
By Nino Ricci
The first thing you notice when you pick up Testament, the new novel
about the life of Jesus by Nino Ricci, is the dustjacket. The pictures on the
dustjacket are details taken from Caravaggio’s painting "The Resurrection
of Lazarus." Several hours later, the last thing you come to is a page of
Acknowledgments, in which Ricci explains that his novel "does not purport
to be an accurate representation" of "the figure who has come down to
us as Jesus Christ," though he has made "every effort to work within
the bounds of historical plausibility."
In other words, the dustjacket contains a bit of false advertising. Ricci’s
historically plausible Jesus is alien to Caravaggio’s dramatic portrait. The
Jesus in Testament is no miracle worker. The bastard son of Mary and a
Roman legate passing through Jerusalem, he is basically an intelligent,
introverted young man with a gift for healing. He does not walk on water or calm
storms. He does not divide loaves and fishes to feed multitudes. The only person
to witness his transfiguration is a loony zealot who is afraid of ghosts. The
Gadarene demoniac is just in need of a good meal. Even Lazarus, while seeming
dead to one narrator, has hardly been lying four days in the tomb. He has only
been knocked unconscious. As for Jesus’ own resurrection . . . well, you get
the picture.
Truly, to paraphrase the centurion, this was not the Son of God.
And in his defence, Ricci’s Jesus never says he is. Nor does he even use
the more ambiguous title of Son of Man. He is not a revolutionary or radical,
like his mentor John the Baptist, but a kinder, gentler, more Socratic Jesus. There is no Sermon on the
Mount or tirade against
money-changers in the Temple. To his followers he is a reluctant leader, to say
the least. Indeed, he is a figure so bland and innocuous - a Jesus with a
Toronto address, as it were - the novel has trouble explaining why he is
crucified. Hauled before the authorities he can only say "There’s been a
mistake." In the brief interrogation that follows, Pilate, in a rage,
orders his execution despite an invitation to mercy from a Jewish examiner - an
inversion of the Gospels that seems less historically plausible than politically
correct.
Ricci is one of Canada’s best pure writers, and Testament is no
small achievement in any technical regard. The novel is divided into four
sections, each with a different narrator with a different perspective on the life
of Christ: Judas Iscariot, Mary Magdalene, Jesus’ mother Mary, and a farmer
named Simon. The sections overlap and move forward as a unit in an understated
yet impressive handling of structure. While the story of the Gospels is reduced,
the language of the New Testament still has a presence in a number of quiet
allusions. The writing has clarity and elegance throughout, and as a storyteller
Ricci is effective and assured.
It’s typical of stories featuring multiple perspectives on the same events
to have an absent centre, which is also what happens here. Jesus is not a
compelling figure in himself, but rather a conduit, the door or Way. Of all the images
attached to him, the most consistently invoked is the door. Judas (who, by the
way, is no traitor) imagines him "beckoning before me as towards a doorway
he would have me pass through, from darkness to light." Mary Magdalene
likens knowing him to a door suddenly opening to a new country. His mother finds
that through him "some doorway had been shown to me that I would not
otherwise have come to." He brings Simon to a vision of a world "that
you saw for an instant through a gateway or door."
Though it takes its share of liberties, there is much of Testament
that is in keeping with the spirit of the Gospels. It is a backward age that
looks for a sign; the Kingdom of God is within. In a number of subtle, sometimes
indirect ways, Ricci’s book reminds us of these less dramatic spiritual
truths.
Notes:
Review first published June 8, 2002.
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