by Gustave Kahn
“Oh, in those times, it is said, the delights of Israel rang out in admirable songs, tambourines measured the serene joy of Palestine like that of the young and beautiful spouse of a triumphant god, and the peoples in their islands, in their deserts, beyond their rivers, enamored, jealously watched its beauty pass by on the golden chariot with ruby wheels.
“Nonchalant Sion extended her hand toward its baskets, and there were steaming vintages and gaieties loud with song in the stony roads, marriages in the high places, and thousands of donkeys laden with goatskins climbing up to the towns. Sion extended her hand toward its ports, and beneath its feet, emptying the galleys, she heaped up the scarlet bales; the great idols gilded in yellow lands; those of the blacks that are in crudely-worked wood but whose eyes are carbuncles, the nipples of the goddesses rubies and their necklaces of all kinds of splendid gems, assembled at hazard; and also the idols of the Hyperboreans, of ill-shaped wood but clad in the most beautiful soft white or blue-tinted fleeces of unknown animals. And between hers feet, piles of perfumed wood were stacked, so abundantly that the poorest house in Sion contained the aromas of odorant earths.
“On feast-days Sion decked herself in the most beautiful linen fabrics that could be found anywhere in the world, and she raised above her head, in order that the peoples might be charmed thereby, colored scarves as luminous as the stars. Then she smiled with her entire face, and all the wives of her master Solomon, the most of handsome of Javeh’s sons...”
“An ancient dream,” said Ahasverus. “Sion has shrunk within its boundaries, and although the temple, so beautiful, still embellishes the city, it’s not the marvel that you believe...”
“I’m recounting the beauties of the true Temple,” said Dares. “The one that Solomon built for himself as much as for Javeh—did he not think of himself as the reflection of benevolent Javeh? The one that you’ve seen, humans rebuilt, only humans...”
“But men tested by exile and misfortune,” Ahasverus replied. “And is it not beautiful, that temple in which the pillars are suffering, the palms obstinate in their hope—yes, perhaps more beautiful, and yet less, than the bare halls in which the Hebrews of the exiles assembled in order not to forget their language and their law.”
“For you, the solitary wanderer—but is one not closer to eternal forces when one can see their temple illuminated every day and their statues...”
“No, the fixed image of a divinity encumbers me. I prefer to listen to the temple being built within me.”
“However,” said Dares, “that wasn’t the opinion of King David or King Solomon. They were powerful, and sons of the Elohim, and you’re only a poor devil—that creates a difference in ideas. Personally, I’m just a slave. I accept the thoughts of the powerful and believe them to be true, because they’re more beautiful and florid. Those who carry an amulet are more content than people who, like you, seek the desert in the cities and swimming-pools in the desert.”
“Very well. So what did Solomon’s temple lack?”
“That which the King sought for a long time. He consulted the pontiffs, the sages, the judges; all of them were happy with their enriched tiara. He asked the opinion of shrewd merchants; all of them told him that the world’s summer was in flower. He consulted ordinary people; they were delighted by being able to sleep peacefully next to the basin or the fountain, rolled up in their cloaks, without cries of panic ever signaling the arrival on the horizon of marauders on lean horses bent on rapid depredation. He informed the ladies of the palace about his anxieties; they were astonished by his singular concern, and their only response was to point to the effulgent cupolas and he colossal towers, and the terraces of the city that extended like a joyous lawn at the feet of the temple and the palace.
“One day, when King Solomon was wandering some distance from his house of pleasure in Gilead, celebrated for its great shadows and its colossal golden apples, he had abandoned the straight and shady route; he saw that he was in a region that did not seem familiar, and far from all the lustrous beauty of his kingdom. It was like a gorge between hills of gray stone, scaled by clumps of gorse and thyme, and hawks were circling above it.
“There, he saw a beautiful Ishmaelite girl coming toward him, singing and dancing, thrusting out her red-clad bosom, with castanets in her fingers. She had the features of those tribes which wander in the heart of the Arabian deserts, to which are attributed to gifts of prescience and deciphering the meaning of birdsong and the forms of clouds. Many of them lived within the confines of the land of Midian.
“And the young woman said to him: ‘Greetings to the well-beloved, greetings to the anxious man...’ Then she fled, laughing.
“The king went after her, but the capricious young woman passed through the large clumps of vegetation very nimbly and leapt over the stony bed of the dry stream. Finally, she deigned to sit down on a boulder, and then Solomon was able to approach her. He asked her what she had meant.
“‘Well-beloved,’ she said, ‘you are by all Israel, for you are King Solomon; anxious you are, for you are searching for what the temple lacks, and no one can tell you—and the daughter of Ishmael does not want to tell you. Guess if you can.’
“Beside her, two large, superb and supple lilies were bending over. She tore up one of them and threw it into the air; the wind caught it, and it spun around, and was soon out of sight—and while the king reflected, the Ishmaelite fled again, without him being able to follow her.
“Solomon searched his wisdom. It seemed to him that the wild lily was the Ishmaelite herself, and the disappearance of the flower her flight toward the arid hills. One of the lilies remained on its stem; did that signify that the two flowers needed to be separated, that another had to grow in place of the one that had been torn up? And his thought never ceased to indentify the wild lilies with the slender, strong and beautiful girl.
“He left the cedars of Gilead again and returned to the rocky gorge, without seeing anyone there henceforth, and he was disappointed by that when, one day, on the terrace of his palace, the young woman appeared directly in front of him—and the King asked her, emotionally, to stay in Gilead.
“‘If I accepted, Lord, you would soon send me away. How can a powerful King allow himself to be charmed for more than a minute by a rock-flower? And I would always think that it is in order to know the key to the enigma that you tell me that you love me. Powerful King, I’m going away—seek on your own.’ And she disappeared.
“The king remained thoughtful. He felt strongly that all this had as much to do with the temple as with himself. ‘If I, who am accustomed to the most marvelous perfumes, have felt so much pleasure in respiring the scent of these wild lilies momentarily,’ he said to himself, ‘if I, who am almost sated, light up with such joy at the approach of the wandering girl, and the aridity of that soil delights me, the master of domains and palaces...’
“He thought that Javeh might similarly appreciate being momentarily distanced from the luxury prepares for him, that the god of infinite space and the gulfs where matter ends might find the most sumptuous assemblages of marble and gold paltry and unworthy of him—and this is what he did, obedient to his meditation:
“He had a ship constructed, of the most magnificent wood, and decorated it soberly in the softest fabrics; in the heart of the ship a kind of closed pavilion was built, and there King Solomon placed one of the crowns and one of the swords bequeathed to him by David. The external sides of the hull were painted green, which signifies hope, the internal sides scarlet, which radiates glory. The poop, the prow and the masts were hung with the most beautiful garlands of resistant and spontaneous flowers that grow near the sea. Inside the pavilion, next to David’s sword and crown, Solomon had engraved on a golden plaque: The ship, the sword and the crown are destined for the Lord’s new elect; they will be his most humble witnesses with regard to the people of the Earth.
“Then, before a small number of his principal officers—those to whom he revealed his thoughts—the
ship was launched on to the sea, without any mariner aboard. It cut through the waves with the ease of a swan on a river, and soon disappeared into the light mist on the horizon.
“And Solomon said to his people: “The Eternal now has his two temples: the one on the hill of Sion that will speak to him of our love, his strength, his will and our contemplation of his benefits; and that consecrated ship, which is going toward him by way of the caprices of horizons, homage to his unexplored form, to what is perhaps his secondary, but existent, form, Chance.’”
And the smiling Ahasverus said to Dares: “Happy old man in whom the golden tales of the ancestors live, like a tree in rich soil.”
PASSOVER
As the days of Passover approached, Ahasverus asked King Balthazar for permission to leave. “Sire King,” he said, “I have tarried to long in your gracious company, and remorse will not permit me to be one of the fortunate individuals of his world. The evolution of Ahasverus is not a matter of taking part in festivals that he no longer understands, and I do not wish, Sire King, other than in solitary suffering, to grasp the meaning of those festivals, which I used to celebrate passively. Permit poor Ahasverus, Sire King, to accomplish the destiny inscribed in all his dreams, and to march, since that is the desire of every fiber of his being. In acting thus, I believe, I am obedient to objectives superior to me.”
“My only desire, Ahasverus, is that you leave with a little joy—and, if possible, to diminish your imminent fatigue. Would you like a ship to take you to whichever distant shore you please, and to leave here with a little gold? Would you like a caravan to accompany you across the sands? When you arrive at a rich city, or an abundant land, you can send it back, conserving from its cargo whatever you think necessary.”
“Thank you, Sire King,” said Ahasverus. “I want to march alone, and leave by the landward route. I shall go toward the meager pasturage, the desolate gorges and the poor tribes. There I shall find out, more easily than in great cities, whether my soul, which you have refreshed, will continue to enjoy new life.”
“At least accept a good horse, which will lessen your initial fatigue...”
“I accept it,” said Ahasverus, “in order to get away more rapidly from human beings, and your domains. I do not want to see anyone for a long time, in order not to spoil the exquisite impression of pause and rest that I am carrying away from your hospitality. Having arrived in another region, as soon as I encounter a handsome young man who still believes that traveling more rapidly means arriving sooner, I’ll make a gift of your horse to his young impatience.”
“Go,” said the King, “and be happy. Dares will escort you through the gardens.”
And Ahasverus took his leave of the King and Joseph of Arimathea.
“Old friend,” Ahasverus said to Dares, when they arrived at the limits of the garden, where a young groom was already holding the bridle of a horse, “I no longer have my former life, of the time when I was stern and hard and preoccupied with a thousand trivia, like this bronze ring. I give it to you; it will no longer remind me of the old man that I was and it will remind you of the respite that I have fund in your stories and your songs. May your life be long and may the peace of your soul be the inexhaustible gentle fountain of the lilt of your song, in which you weave the pleasure of living, listening and gazing, as a clever man bends wicker for baskets that will be filled with fruits. Take it, and farewell. No, don’t give me anything in exchange; I don’t want to possess anything except myself. Adieu.”
And Ahasverus leapt on to his horse—and, with a few bounds, drew away.
On the day of Passover, trumpets sounded from every turret toward the clear and infinite sky. On the day before, the servants had stripped the gardens of their abundant ornamentation, and the walls of the castle were carefully embraced by an embalmed reflection of the sunlight. The terrace and the steps of the staircase that descended toward the sea were ennobled with red roses, like the blood of the Sun, and white and yellow roses like the fires of the dawn. Amid the green assembly of branches, large flowers in ivory flesh tones respired near those that one might have thought adorned with the magnificent robes of queens. Heaps of flowers as red as lips were associated with those of flowers with hearts as velvety as eyes. Incense fumed in enormous bronze vases amid the warmest of breezes, and the white seabirds wheeling in the sky resembled winged flowers.
In the topmost room of the palace, tables were being prepared for the feast; the best-loved subjects of the king and his oldest servants were to take their places there beside him. Before sitting down to it, the King and the residents of the castle went to meet those who were arriving by the landward route. Their horses were decorated with sparkling white plumes and broad cloths in which golden designs were woven. Majestic old men and vigorous young ones left them in the hands of black grooms with light helmets and dull silver damascened corselets, then came together; feathers topped their turbans, ornamented with carbuncles and topazes, and chimerical lotus-blossoms and other dream-like flowers shone upon their long, brightly-colored robes.
Chiefs of the desert tribes, sterner and more bronzed than the others, mingled with them, draped in their monochrome mantles, relieved only by the gems of their fasteners. Enormous elephants arrived at a slow place along a broad path tiled in marble, and women in long white veils trimmed with gold got down therefrom, light sparkling crowns circling their heads; they did not unveil themselves until they reached the portico under which King Balthazar awaited them.
Then, from the road of the sands, came processions of camels, ostentatiously laden with bells, which stretched out their necks, mounted by nomads in tight tunics, bearing lances and polished bucklers that the Sun made into mirrors, or led by hand by slaves on foot, swinging the heavy paired coffers with which each was burdened, offerings from the people to the King.
And the castle, so grave and silent, the castle inhabited by taciturn old men, awoke, entirely given over to the joyful laughter of its guests and the pomp of their arrival. Around the old King, venerable in his long white costume bordered with scarlet, with a scintillating tiara on his head, over his abundant white hair, and a necklace of unparalleled gemstones, incandescent with white fire, on his breast, young women now crowded, laughing and respectful, their veils thrown back over their shoulders, allowing the sight of their silvery, orange and white robes, with superficial displays of chimerical flowers in radiant colors, violet lotus-blossoms and mauve flowers with coralline stems, and girdles with multicolored fringes, and, above all, their lightly bronzed faces with long black arched eyebrows and tresses the color of celebratory night, and their eyes.
Dares was occupied with the children that had been brought to King Balthazar in order that he might bless them, and all their questions, all their gaiety and all their polite babble flowed around him. His eyes were moist with joy in his black face, and the little ones surrounded him wherever he went, like living ivy mingled with colored flowers stirring on a windy day around a pillar of basalt.
It was Passover, and this year, the King, who had not celebrated it for a long time, had invited his principal subjects far in advance.
After the feast, when the young women and the children had dispersed into the gardens, the young men had returned to their horses and many of the guests had already taken the roads to their own countries again, King Balthazar said to the sages of his realm:
“I asked you to come, my friends, with your sons and daughters around you, in order to see you one more time—the last—for presentiments have warned me of my imminent end or transformation. I have asked you to come on this day of celebration, the only one that I have maintained a little more joyful in this castle, where the organs have fallen silent and the vaults of prayer are closed, in order to associate myself one more time with the joy of renascent life, for if some people think that this feast signifies the exodus of the people of Shem from the hands of the conqueror, a notion familiar to some branches of our race, I think that Passover signifies the renewal of l
ife, the triumph of life over death. It is the eternal subject of human rejoicing, the feast that gives rise, when the promises of spring burst forth before the days of the blaze of the Sun over the Earth, to the joy of feeling still alive, forever giving life to what the hymns you sing elsewhere signify. It is for that coincidence of an awakening of more vivid flowers with the resurrection of all the minutes that unroll in the universe that Passover was chosen, and I admit that young intelligences perceive in the perennial nature of the feast a promise of eternal Forces, since the Forces disengage life and charm simultaneously.
“But the desire of the old King is to gaze at youth and hear an echo of his own before disappearing. Whether I die tomorrow or live on for many years, this castle is closed to any arrival from without; this will soon die, alive or dead; I am walling myself up in the definitive silence. Doubtless my friends the Mage-Kings are, like me, preparing in their palaces for the coming of Azrael; the snow on our heads designates us for dissolution in nothingness, and other men and other thoughts are being born, which ought not to encounter us in their route. Go, and let sunset find you far from this castle, which, like me, is entering its winter, never to emerge again, and may your memories of me be kind.”
Then he withdrew, and everyone left the castle, with hushed voices.
On the evening of that day, King Balthazar and Joseph, with Dares close at hand, were leaning on the terrace and watching the sea; they were listening to the sound of the waves dying beneath the livid light of the Moon. Neither Dares not Joseph troubled the solemn sadness of the King.
“I shall be extinguished soon,” said Balthazar. “Toward what rebirth shall I go? Oh, how limited the science of the Priest-Kings is...”
“Jesus,” said Joseph, “tell us that all the dead will be resuscitated one day.”