by John Crowley
The peasant who had first found him had fallen out with his son, and one day as the animals looked on in incomprehension (all but one of them) the two men, more bestial by far than those who observed them, went for each other with knives; son killed father, and then was taken away himself to be hanged. The lord of the manor pulled down the house and gave the land to the church, grisly ghosts and all; receivers came and put up for sale whatever of worth was movable. The Ass was driven with the other beasts to the fair and was there sold to a merchant to carry his goods.
Haberdashery, raw silks, the little ribbons or zagarelle that boys give to girls, gold and silver thread, combs, Spanish caps from Spanish Naples, the merchant carried his load from fair to fair: when one closed and its stalls were dismantled he knew of another one opening a day's walk away. He might acquire a large load of some commodity at one, cheeses or almonds or skins, taking a chance that he could make a profit on it at the next, and sometimes he bought a mule or two to carry it, and then sold them too. He was a busy round cheerful fretful man who could add and subtract and multiply on his fingers up to hundreds of soldi, and in his head turn the weights and measures of one region—of lead, silk cloth, pepper—into the measures of the next he came to.
His new little ass he kept, loading him to the withers and as high as his own head while whistling tunelessly and happily. And much as the Ass hated each morning, the new prospect, the new road, still he was not walking in a circle, and he could not despise his new master. When he stood to sleep beside him in the noontide, or alone in the innyard at night, he bent his mind to remember, remember; he worked his thick coarse tongue and the strong jaw that Samson had used for a weapon, so unsuited to what he needed it now to do. Walking the roads and highways from the fairs of Recanati and Sinigaglia in the Papal States across the mountains to the fairs authorized by the Republic of Venice at Bergamo and Brescia, he hawed and sighed and moaned in the back of his throat until his master struck him smartly in impatience, but it was quite suddenly and without forethought, on a rocky mountain road in a hurry to make town before nightfall, that at last he managed it:
—My load is unbalanced, he said. If you don't shift it you will lame me.
We are less surprised than perhaps we suppose we will be to hear our beasts talk. After all, they do in our dreams, and even awake we seem to hear their thoughts well enough. In scripture, when Balaam's little ass suddenly appealed to him, saying What have I done unto thee, that thou hast smitten me these three times? Balaam evinced no surprise at it. He simply answered: Because you mocked me.
So the merchant, after looking around himself a moment and realizing no one else could have spoken but the beast looking up at him in supplication, proceeded to repack the baggage on his back.
—Better? he asked then mockingly, as though daring the ass to speak again. But the Ass kept silent, amazed and suddenly cautious. The two of them went on.
That night, though, when the buying and selling were done, and the merchant had prepared his bed on the grounds where the fair had been held, as he sometimes did when the night was fine and warm and his goods were heavy, the Ass told him, or tried to tell him, how speech had become possible for him, without at the same time revealing that he hadn't always been what he now seemed, which might be dangerous.
For who was he, truly? To be called an Ass is simply to be recognized as an instance of the universal singularity, nothing but an example of a suffering and acting thing. Of which all other things are also perfect examples. “The ideal Ass is the productive, formative, and supranaturally perfecting principle of the asinine species, which, however much it is distinguished in the capacious bosom of nature from other species, nonetheless—and this is of the greatest importance—is, in the First Mind, not other than the type of all intelligences, dæmons, gods, worlds, and the universe; the type from which not only asses but men, stars, worlds, and beings all depend: in it there is no difference of subject or form, of thing or things; it is simple and one.” He had written that, once. So the surprise was not (he told the merchant) that he could speak, but that so few other asses (or dogs or stars or stones or roses) ever did; at least not when human hearers were by.
Which in logic was actually an Equivocation, as he had been taught long ago, but the merchant only lay with his hands crossed over his breast and listened thoughtfully.
—Well, you are a true philosopher, he said then. I am only a man with a living to get. And hard as it may seem to require so well-spoken a creature as yourself to carry, the work still needs doing.
—Fair enough, said the Ass. If you will grant my poor self the general honor due to a being capable of speech, therefore reason, I will go on doing the work my shape suits me for. It's the best I could hope for, I suppose.
—That's fine then, said the merchant sleepily.
They didn't know their conversation was overheard.
Late in the night, before he could fully awaken and perceive what was happening to him, the Ass felt a bag slipped suddenly over his head.
—There is, said a voice, a pistol pointed at your head. It were best you be still.
And indeed the beast felt the prod of it behind his left ear.
—Come along, said the voice, and it will be to your advantage. Don't cry out.
The Ass understood immediately that the one, or ones, who were around him knew he was possessed not only of language but reason, if they could speak thus to him. He wondered if they also knew that his asinine nature wouldn't permit him to take even a step with his eyes blind. They must have, for after a moment the bag was drawn down enough for him to see; and—his heart huge to know his life and his adventure weren't to end, whether to grow worse or better—he went along with them. There were three, and they hurried him through the darkened grounds and the crowd of sleeping or unsleeping merchants, farmers, Gypsies, whores, out onto the highway, thence after a long walk (the Ass kept prudently silent) to the stable yard of a low inn, where more of their gang was gathered, who whistled and cheered softly to see their fellows bring in the prize, himself.
Who were they? Thieves? The pistol held to his head, he could perceive now, was only a stick of wood. What did they intend? And why, above all, did they speak to him, and to one another, in English?
—Masters, he said, in their own tongue—which caused a noise of delight or awe among them—masters, what do you want with me? Why have you abducted me?
—Because, said the largest of them, red cheeked and black whiskered and grinning with a set of cheerful gleaming white teeth, because you will make our fortune. And your own. We have, he said, a proposition.
They weren't thieves, or not usually thieves; they were a troupe of actors, traveling as the Ass and his (former) master did from fair to fair and town to town, as many English companies did. They weren't one of the great troupes with noble patrons that would entertain the Prince and Princess Palatine in Heidelberg, and then make progress through the courts and cities of Europe; they had a few bags filled with costumes, masks, crowns and foils, a set of moth-holed curtains, a drum, and a pipe. The six or eight of them played many parts in every play, changing behind the curtain from lord's cape and sword to swain's jerkin and bottle and rushing on stage again. They had been about to pack all their properties and go home again, no richer than they had come. Then this.
—Join our troop, they said. You'll never carry again, or carry no more than any of us. You'll be a comedian, you'll make us rich, and yourself as well, for we share and share alike, even the asses among us, ha ha.
It was an easy decision to make. The short summer night was past; dawn had come, and a ray of the all-giving sun now fell into that little stable yard. What rich might mean to one like himself he couldn't say, but if ease, and scope, and intellectual delight were all he got, it was more than the Ass he was could have aspired to, and ought to be enough for the man.
—What play shall we play? he said.
They laughed, they cheered, and their chief, or anyway the large
st among them, pulled from his pack a greasy and leaf-curled book without a cover, and as everyone laughed some more, he proffered it and the Ass noticed, on the third finger of the man's hand, a ring: a ring cut with a curious figure that he was sure he remembered, or had once imagined, or in future might conceive. The player splayed open the pages and put the book before the Ass, who looked upon it, found he could read it, and trembled in amazement, for the story was his own:
Once as I grazed vpon the Lippe of steepe and stoney Rauine, conceiving the Desire to chew vpon a louely Cardoon or Thistle, growing some little way downe the Precipice, and Satisfyed that I coulde Stretch my longe Necke so farre without Perill, defying the pricks alike of Conscience and naturall Reason, I leaned out, and farther out, ‘til I could no longer lean; and I fell from that Cliffy Height; and thereupon my Master knew, that he had bought mee but for Crow's-meate.
Freed from the Prison of my Flesshe, I became a wandering Spirit, without Members; and I saw that, as to my Substance Spirituall, I was in no different case than all other Spirits, who vpon the dissoluing of their Animal or compound Bodies, begin straightaway to Transmigrate. For (as I saw) Fate not only remoueth all distinctioun (as regards their Corporality) between the Ass's flesshe and Man's, likewise between the Brute and the wholly Inanimate: also it remoueth all Distinctioun between the Asinine and the Human Soul, indeed betweene those souls and the soul that is found in all things.
It was his own story, that is, his own work—it was the Cabala del Caballo Pegaseo, which he had written long years before, here translated from the Italian into English by his friend and follower Alexander Dicson, who missed him dreadfully after his departure from England, and who earned not a penny from the little book on whose title page his name stood beneath the author's, with his Oxford degree appended, and the date (1599). In surprise and pity the Ass studied the book, holding its pages down with an unhandy forefoot and tempted to eat the leaves rather than reading them. How had it come into the hands of this company? How was the Ass able to read it with his ass's poor eyes, and recognize it? How did Tom the grinning principal player come by the ring on his finger, just that ring with just that figure? And why did the Ass, as the players pointed out, bear the same figure on his own back, where all other asses bear the cross of Christ? How come? Because without these wonders, and all the others like them preceding and to come, there wouldn't be a story to tell, and without a story no one would come to hear—as every player knows.
* * * *
For a year the company (they now called themselves I Giordanisti after the Ass had told them his tale, as much of it as he could remember) went up and down High Germany, playing the play of The Transformations of Ass Onorius, the Cabalistical Steed, partly in German, partly Italian, partly English, mostly in the universal language. In university towns they played the scenes of Onorius's metempsychosis into Aristotle, Pythagoras, a Grammarian, a Schoolman, as the students howled encouragement, an easy audience. They also played Lucius, or the Life and Adventures of the Golden Ass, from the book of Apuleius; performances might or might not, depending, include the scene of poor Lucius inveigled into the Matron's bed, but always included the final Transformation, of Lucius the Ass into Lucius the Man, by the sweet power of all-seeing Isis, clothed in the sky and the stars.
Their success was huge, and not so surprising; for after all the Ass, or his inhabiting spirit rather, had begun his writing life years ago with what? A play. A comedy in fact, Il Candelaio. And ever after he had set people to talking in his works, in his dialogues, and in his poems—fools, philosophers, pedants, gods, and goddesses.
Then the wind began to blow from another quarter. Maybe they should have been more cautious; maybe they should have avoided Apuleius, that infamous magician; maybe they shouldn't have become so far famed so quickly.
No no, they told the authorities who questioned them. No no, not magic, no none of that. Just ordinary stage tricks, sleight of hand, Jahrmarktsgaukelei. The Ass stood meekly silent before the tribunal as one of the company showed how the trick was done, ventriloquia, nothing forbidden about it. They were lucky to be only driven out of the parish and the town.
But it was hard for him to be silent. The more he wrote and spoke and thought, the more he seemed to himself the man who had once been, and the less the ass he was. For the first time he was ashamed of his nakedness. From patient he grew ill tempered, from gentle to surly, and at last became melancholy, would neither think nor write, finally not speak, not eat.
What to do? His fellows vowed to help him, do all they could, but there seemed only one possibility: he must hope for a further transformation, and somehow become a man entire. As Lucius Apuleius the Golden Ass does.
One certainty consoled me then in my darkest hour, says Lucius, that the new year was here at last, and the wildflowers would soon be coming out to color the meadows; and in the gardens the rosebuds long imprisoned in their thorny stocks would appear, and open, and breathe out their indescribable odor; and I would eat and eat, and become once again myself.
—But I am myself, said the Ass. I am an ass not figuratively, or platonically, or cabalistically, or in disguise or in effect, but actually. There is no rose for me to feed upon that will change me back; there is no way back at all.
—Ah, said the players, who pitied him, even though it would surely reduce their income if he were somehow made a man.
—I can't return, he said, to that Pythagorean way I chose to tread, and take the other way.
—No, said his fellows sadly, for neither could they.
—Very well then, said the Ass, and the players lifted their heads, for they heard a new note, as players are quick to do. We can't go back. No one can. What we were is not, but what we will be, we cannot know.
—Yes, said his companions.
—There is one place I could go, said the Ass after long thought. A city of wise workers, a city where transformation is not only possible but likely.
—What city?
—I was there. I was summoned to counsel the Emperor. I, I.
—Yes! said his companions. The little ass seemed in their eyes to grow in stature as he spoke, to a noble height, a proud determination.
—We'll go on, said the Ass. Go on by going back. To Prague.
—Prague! They rose as one, and looked on each other with gay resolve. Actors can do this, too: more than once they had got themselves in awful trouble by suddenly, and convincingly, pretending to grand emotions, a ringing curtain line. Eagle-browed Ass! Winged Ass! they sang. To Prague! they sang, and they set to, and packed their bags and their properties, and loaded them on the back of the Ass and into the bright new wagon that his mute cousin the mule pulled, and set out. Soon the road unrolled before them, running ever on. Over the hills and far away, sang the players.
Tom he was a piperes sonne
He stole a pipe and awaye he ronne
And the onlie tune that hee could play
Was Over the hills and farre away.
They all sang the chorus, and even the Ass hee-hawed like the famous ass musician of Bremen:
Over the hills and a grete way off
The wind shall blow my topknot off.
4
Behind the gallimordium, the old royal brothel, up a winding alley, were the gates of the great Jewish quarter of the city. Each evening those who had been out and about the city hurried within before the gates were shut, artisans and laborers and peddlers in their caftans marked with yellow circles and their tall pointed yellow hats with curious balls atop them, the richer men's caftans of silk, their hats brimmed with fur. The Ass and his two companions, Tom and another who best knew the German tongue, went in through the gates with them, looking neither right nor left, and into the crowded streets, some of the streets so narrow that the housewives could touch from window to window above the heads of those who passed or struggled to pass below. Other streets were closed above altogether, the buildings joined above them and turning them to caves or tunnels that
went up and down stairs in the dark before debouching again into the day.
Up the little city past the Town Hall, whose clock was set out in Hebrew letters and whose hands ran backward like the eyes of Torah readers, past the synagogue called the New Synagogue that was as old as almost any church of the city (for the Jews, so the Jews asserted, had been in Prague from its founding): black and small it was, though, not great, and inside the walls were black too with a thousand years of candle smoke, the cantor ululating softly in the almemar as they went by.
Up farther, under another gallery, past a market now closing, cooped ducks, geese, and doves; a further tunnel of darkness, drip of cisterns, branching alleys to choose from, all different but indistinguishable; and at last to the house they sought, the most famous house of the quarter, before which a small crowd was as always gathered.
From surprise at their appearing there with the little ass beside them without lead or halter, the crowd let the players pass through, and go into the court within. Tom and his comrade went through an inner door and up a stairway, along a lightless corridor, Tom reaching before him with his hands to find the door; going first through a room of women and girls whose pale faces took light from the evening candles, who spoke and laughed among themselves as they passed, and then into a farther room, the bet ha-midrash, where the Great Rabbi taught, and men and boys listened and read.
He was Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the most famous of all the famous wise men of Prague. Jews from Rus and Damascus and Fez and Venice came to consult him. Doctor John Dee when he had lived here had heard of his wisdom, his rabínská moudrost, and had come here to learn with him. The Emperor Rudolf himself had been in awe of it, and once summoned the Rabbi to the Hradcany to question him; the Rabbi's son-in-law Isak Kohen wrote later that the Rabbi was brought to a small room, a curtain was pushed aside, the Emperor came in, asked the rabbi several questions, and then retired. What questions? What answers? Isak Kohen wrote: what they talked of must, as is the imperial practice, not be revealed.