— I’ll wager a scholar, the captain said.
— A clerk, said Dove, in the survey service, but with some training in the scrolls.
He talked, as men of business talk, of his work with the boundary markers when the government extended the tax lands from the gates at Hamath to the shores of Arabah. He had searched the titles for that, and knew that Jeroboam, the second of that name, had been pleased with his work and had even put his name in the deeds as the consultant who had certified the religious correctness of this extension of Israel.
For Dove had been educated at Gath Hepher as a man of law.
A raindrop, from nowhere, plopped on the back of his hand.
In the school he had mastered the scrolls, but his heart was with the study of birds and plants. He had drawn greenshanks, buntings, and stonechats in the margins of his texts, the moabite sparrow, smew, stint, flycatcher, snipe, grebe, godwit, wheatear, moor hen, goldeneye.
He felt that he saw the Everlasting better in His creation than in the scrolls of the law. Angels had come down from the stars to men and women of old, and the Everlasting had dealt with Moses and Abraham face to face, a fire in a bush, a voice in the wind. But Dove preferred to know the Everlasting in the garden, the meadow, the terebinth grove.
The fair wind that had taken them from Joppa was beginning to blow hot, as from an oven, and then chill, as through a door opened in springtime. Sultry, then fresh. Fresh, sultry.
But the week before, of an evening, when he was admiring gourds in his garden, he had felt a voice at his ear. His astonishment was as great as his fear. There was no mistaking the voice. It was that of the Everlasting.
A merchant pointed out to another, and to Dove, a glow on the tip of the mast.
That fitful misty light was like the voice in the garden.
— O do not doubt but do believe!
— Lord I am not worthy.
— Thy name is the carrier dove.
The archaic Hebrew of the Everlasting with its purring gutterals and shimmering sibilants dropped word by word into his heart.
The wind fell calm, sails hung slack, the sea went flat.
— Go to Nineveh in Assyria, it said. Go to Nineveh in Assyria and take the people from their superstitions. Tell them that I am. Tell them fate is a lie. Tell them that I am that I am. Tell them that their images of monsters and wandering stars are but a pitiful and childish understanding of being.
It was in the cool after sunset, shadows filling the garden, doves cooing in the terebinths. He was admiring the small white gourds straked with bitter green, the longnecked gourds the color of sand, the martin’s nest gourds. Cucumbers, gherkins, pumpkins.
It was old Liveforever, no doubt about it. Jonah go to Nineveh in Assyria. He had done well to flee.
The sea began to heave in low greasy swells.
What had he to do with the dovecotes and bee gums of Assyria? The lions and hyenas of Assyria? They had Ishtar there, the abomination of the bed. Calculators of starlight, pounders of unlawful herbs, delineators of impossible creatures, bulls with wings, demons with claws.
The Everlasting is a spirit, source of our being, who guides the feet of the ant and the tooth of the fox, but man was left free to find for himself the hand of his maker. The swelling pumpkin sits while the vine on which it fattens creeps and multiplies its leaves. So the heart fills with knowledge as the body moves through the world, learning from kind and mean alike.
If the Everlasting made us free, why does he treat us like slaves?
There was a devil dance of lightning where a black wall of cloud sank down to the darkening sea.
— A squall, the captain said.
It hit so hard and so suddenly that the ship moved backwards. The sail tore loose and boomed above them. The sailors, each shouting to his god, began throwing bolts of merchandise into the sea. Some man, one said, with whom Baal is angry, is aboard this luckless ship. Another cried that someone who had done an unclean thing in the eyes of Thoth was with them. Who? The passenger Dove was asleep in a trance, some work of magic upon him.
The captain shook him until his head rolled on his shoulders.
— Is it you? he bellowed.
— He is the one! they all agreed.
— Is it you? the captain cried over and over.
— It is I, said Dove. I am a Jew. I am gripped by a great fear of my god, whose name is Everlasting, creator of the seas and the dry land.
— What can we do, a merchant asked, to keep your guilt from drowning us all?
And he said unto them:
— Take me up, and cast me into the sea. So shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.
Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship to land, but they could not. For the sea worked against them. Wherefore they cried unto their gods, saying, Let us not perish because of this man, O Lord! Why should the innocent die in the loss of a sinner?
Then they hoisted Dove, three men carrying him, and threw him over the side.
Now the Everlasting had sent a great fish to swallow Dove, whose body was inside the fish for three days, but his face looked from the fish’s mouth, and he held onto its back teeth. The fish leapt from wave to wave, and Dove breathed when the fish breathed, and held his breath when it swam under water.
I am, said Dove in his anguish, banished from the eyes of the Everlasting. I am dead, and yet alive. I exist, but the Everlasting is not with me.
I know what it is to exist and yet not be. I know how the roots of mountains and the bottom of the sea exist without knowing. I see that by putting myself and my comfort before the word of the Everlasting, I have abandoned mercy. I have made myself a stranger to kindness, and live in darkness, away from the light. My debt is enormous, but were I allowed to pay it, my thanksgiving would be endless, and I would pay beyond measure, again and again, without thought for anything else. For there is no life except that the Everlasting gives it.
And the Everlasting spoke a word to the fish, and it coughed Dove out upon the beach, where he danced with joy before he fell on his knees and prayed for hours and hours.
And a voice said again, Jonah go to Nineveh that great city and preach as I told thee before to go and preach that I am and that I am that I am.
Nineveh as all know is so wide a city that it takes three days to walk from the front gate to the back gate. When Dove was a day’s walk into the city, confused by its booths and markets and temples that stank, he stood on a corner, in the dust, and shouted as loud as he could:
— Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!
People gathered about, and listened. They believed all he said, and repented, and wore sackcloth, and put ashes on their heads, from the king to the lowest beggar. The king sent an order throughout the city that the very oxen, asses, and sheep were to be dressed in sackcloth, and heaped with ashes, for the sake of repentance. Every word that Dove said, the king repeated as a royal decree. Every hand must stay itself in its violence, every heart must empty itself of lust. All the people of Assyria turned to the Everlasting, throwing their idols beyond the wall. Even then, the king was not certain that the Everlasting was not still angry unto death with him and his people.
But the Everlasting himself came as a voice to the king and said that he was pleased with him and his people, and would not afflict them with pestilence and earthquake after the forty days.
But Dove was filled with chagrin and outrage. He asked the Everlasting if he were sent as a prophet to destroy this wicked city, only to have his words cast back in his teeth, and his prophecy a mockery?
— Is it good to be angry? the Everlasting asked.
So Dove left the city, and pitched his tent outside the walls, for he believed in his heart that the Everlasting would strike the people with plague and a storm, and he wanted to see it, but not too close. He was happy when a gourd, his favorite of creation, grew before his eyes beside his tent. It grew faster than any plant outside
Eden, by sinuous thrusts, putting out leaves like geese stretching their wings. In a matter of an hour the vine had made a green shade for Dove, and he sat in its cool with the sense that the Everlasting loved him, and had accepted his sorrowful repentance. Surely, on the morrow, Nineveh would perish, and Dove would be a prophet of great stature.
The morning came. Dove woke, and saw straightaway that his gourd vine was wilting. The cool wind of the morning turned hot. The vine drooped and died, its leaves turning brown before his eyes. Nineveh stood in all its splendor, going about its business as on any other day. Then Dove knew that the Everlasting was angry with him, and would do him a mischief again, and that Nineveh would not care one way or the other. I have, Dove cried, disobeyed the Everlasting and come within the width of a hair of death. And I have obeyed the Everlasting and come to humiliation. There is neither justice nor truth in the world, or in heaven.
As he sat in the broiling sun, he heard a voice in his ear.
— Is it good to be angry because the gourd withered away when you thought it was a sign of your triumph over Nineveh?
— It is good, said Dove in his anger. Would that I were dead.
— It is pity you feel for the gourd, the Everlasting said, because you loved it, and saw me in it. But there is not in you anything that can make a gourd to grow, to flower, to be fat with fruit. Nineveh is my gourd. I made her, that beautiful city. It is rich in cows, sheep, and oxen. And one hundred and twenty thousand people live there who cannot tell their right hand from their left.
And
A PAPYRUS FRAGMENT OF A GOSPEL WRITTEN IN THE FIRST CENTURY shows us Jesus on the bank of the Jordan with people around him. The fragment is torn and hard to read.
In the first line Jesus is talking but we cannot make out what he’s saying: too many letters are missing from too many words to conjecture a restoration. It’s as if we were too far back to hear well.
We catch some words. He is saying something about putting things in a dark and secret place. He says something about weighing things that are weightless.
The people who can hear him are puzzled and look to each other, some with apologetic smiles, for help in understanding.
Then Jesus, also smiling, steps to the very edge of the river, as if to show them something. He leans over the river, one arm reaching out. His cupped hand is full of seeds. They had not noticed a handful of seeds before.
He throws the seeds into the river.
Trees, first as sprouts, then as seedlings, then as trees fully grown, grew in the river as quickly as one heartbeat follows another. And as soon as they were there they began to move downstream with the current, and were suddenly hung with fruit, quinces, figs, apples, and pears.
That is all that’s on the fragment.
We follow awhile in our imagination: the people running to keep up with the trees, as in a dream. Did the trees sink into the river? Did they flow out of sight, around a bend?
Belinda’s World Tour
A LITTLE GIRL, HUSTLED INTO HER PRAM BY AN OFFICIOUS NURSE, discovered halfway home from the park that her doll Belinda had been left behind. The nurse had finished her gossip with the nurse who minced with one hand on her hip, and had had a good look at the grenadiers in creaking boots who strolled in the park to eye and give smiling nods to the nurses. She had posted a letter and sniffed at various people. Lizaveta had tried to talk to a little boy who spoke only a soft gibberish, had kissed and been kissed by a large dog, and had helped another little girl fill her shoes with sand.
And Belinda had been left behind. They went back and looked for her in all the places they had been. The nurse was in a state. Lizaveta howled. Her father and mother were at a loss to comfort her, as this was the first tragedy of her life and she was indulging all its possibilities. Her grief was the more terrible in that they had a guest to tea, Herr Doktor Kafka of the Assicurazioni Generali, Prague office.
— Dear Lizaveta! Herr Kafka said. You are so very unhappy that I am going to tell you something that was going to be a surprise. Belinda did not have time to tell you herself. While you were not looking, she met a little boy her own age, perhaps a doll, perhaps a little boy, I couldn’t quite tell, who invited her to go with him around the world. But he was leaving immediately. There was no time to dally. She had to make up her mind then and there. Such things happen. Dolls, you know, are born in department stores, and have a more advanced knowledge than those of us who are brought to houses by storks. We have such a limited knowledge of things. Belinda did, in her haste, ask me to tell you that she would write, daily, and that she would have told you of her sudden plans if she had been able to find you in time.
Lizaveta stared.
But the very next day there was a postcard for her in the mail. She had never had a postcard before. On its picture side was London Bridge, and on the other lots of writing which her mother read to her, and her father, again, when he came home for dinner.
Dear Lizaveta: We came to London by balloon. Oh, how exciting it is to float over mountains, rivers, and cities with my friend Rudolf, who had packed a lunch of cherries and jam. The English are very strange. Their clothes cover all of them, even their heads, where the buttons go right up into their hats, with button holes, so to speak, to look out of, and a kind of sleeve for their very large noses. They all carry umbrellas, as it rains constantly, and long poles to poke their way through the fog. They live on muffins and tea. I have seen the King in a carriage drawn by forty horses, stepping with precision to a drum. More later. Your loving doll, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: We came to Scotland by train. It went through a tunnel all the way from London to Edinburgh, so dark that all the passengers were issued lanterns to read The Times by. The Scots all wear kilts, and dance to the bagpipe, and eat porridge which they cook in kettles the size of our bathtub. Rudolf and I have had a picnic in a meadow full of sheep. There are bandits everywhere. Most of the people in Edinburgh are lawyers, and their families live in apartments around the courtrooms. More later. Your loving friend, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: From Scotland we have traveled by steam packet to the Faeroe Islands, in the North Sea. The people here are all fisher-folk and belong to a religion called The Plymouth Brothers, so that when they aren’t out in boats hauling in nets full of herring, they are in church singing hymns. The whole island rings with music. Not a single tree grows here, and the houses have rocks on their roofs, to keep the wind from blowing them away. When we said we were from Prague, they had never heard of it, and asked if it were on the moon. Can you imagine! This card will be slow getting there, as the mail boat comes but once a month. Your loving companion, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: Here we are in Copenhagen, staying with a nice gentleman named Hans Christian Andersen. He lives next door to another nice gentleman named Søren Kierkegaard. They take Rudolf and me to a park that’s wholly for children and dolls, called Tivoli. You can see what it looks like by turning over this card. Every afternoon at 4 little boys dressed in red (and they are all blond and have big blue eyes) march through Tivoli, and around and around it, beating drums and playing fifes. The harbor is the home of several mermaids. They are very shy and you have to be very patient and stand still a long time to see them. The Danes are melancholy and drink lots of coffee and read only serious books. I saw a book in a shop with the title How To Be Sure As To What Is And What Isn’t. And The Doll’s Guide To Existentialism; If This, Then What? and You Are More Miserable Than You Think You Are. In haste, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: The church bells here in St. Petersburg ring all day and all night long. Rudolf fears that our hearing will be affected. It snows all year round. There’s a samovar in every streetcar. They read serious books here, too. Their favorite author is Count Tolstoy, who is one of his own peasants (they say this distresses his wife), and who eats only beets, though he adds an onion at Passover. We can’t read a word of the shop signs. Some of the letters are backwards. The men have bushy beards and look like bears. The women keep their
hands in muffs. Your shivering friend, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: We have crossed Siberia in a sled over the snow, and now we are on Sakhalin Island, staying with a very nice and gentle man whose name is Anton Chekhov. He lives in Moscow, but is here writing a book about this strange northern place where the mosquitoes are the size of parrots and all the people are in jail for disobeying their parents and taking things that didn’t belong to them. The Russians are very strict. Mr. Chekhov pointed out to us a man who is serving a thousand years for not saying Gesundheit when the Czar sneezed in his hearing. It is all very sad. Mr. Chekhov is going to do something about it all, he says. He has a cat name of Pussinka who is anxious to return to Moscow and doesn’t like Sakhalin Island at all, at all. Your loving friend, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: Japan! Oh, Japan! Rudolf and I have bought kimonos and roll about in a rickshaw, delighting in views of Fujiyama (a blue mountain with snow on top) through wisteria blossoms and cherry orchards and bridges that make a hump rather than lie flat. The Japanese drink tea in tiny cups. The women have tall hairdos in which they have stuck yellow sticks. Everybody stops what they are doing ten times a day to write a poem. These poems, which are very short, are about crickets and seeing Fujiyama through the wash on the line and about feeling lonely when the moon is full. We are very popular, as the Japanese like novelty. Excitedly, Belinda.
Dear Lizaveta: Here we are in China. That’s the long wall on the other side of the card. The emperor is a little boy who wears a dress the color of paprika. He lives in a palace the size of Prague, with a thousand servants. To get from his nursery to his throne he has a chair between two poles, and is carried. Five doctors look at his poo-poo when he makes it. Sorry to be vulgar, but what’s the point of travel if you don’t learn how different people are outside Prague? Answer me that. The Chinese eat with two sticks and slurp their soup. Their hair is tied in pigtails. The whole country smells of ginger, and they say plog for Prague. All day long firecrackers, firecrackers, firecrackers! Your affectionate Belinda.
The Guy Davenport Reader Page 15