I remembered what Apollonius had said in reference to Jesus. Was I still so much a Jew that property mattered to such a degree? Did not my refusal to accept the jewels indicate what importance I really attached to their value? Had her gift been a flower, say, or a trinket, should I have refused?
“My dear, I accept your gift.”
“Ra-man, Ra-man! Cartaphilus accepts my gift.”
I was happy. With the exception of Hindu philosophers, who initiated me into many of the greater mysteries of the East, and one or two shipowners, with whom I invested some capital, my house was closed to the outer world.
I studied the pathways of the stars. I watched the growth of my trees and flowers. One hundred and twenty different species of birds sang for me; deer gamboled at my approach; an elephant extended his great trunk to be filled with nuts,—and at my feet, like a magnificent lioness, purring delicious nonsense mingled with profound wisdom, stretched out lazily my beloved, my wife.
Asi-ma was standing before the tall, Corinthian silver mirror which I had recently imported for her.
“Cartaphilus, look!” she cried.
“What is it?”
“Cartaphilus, does the mirror lie?”
“Not if it tells you how beautiful you are.”
“The mirror tells me something else; alas its voice is more honest but less honeyed than yours.”
“Then we shall break the mirror, my love. It is blind, and its tongue is poisoned with falsehood.”
“Look, Cartaphilus! See how Time has scratched the edges of my eyes; and also the edges of my lips; and here…look…look at this long scratch upon my throat! Time is a cat, Cartaphilus.”
Her eyes were studded with two, hard tears, which must have smarted her, for she tightened her lids. “How shall a cat scratch a little kitten? Besides, I know a positive cure for this.”
“What, Cartaphilus?”
“My kisses have the power of erasing all such scratches.”
“Kiss me!”
I kissed her eyes and her lips. “Now look in the mirror, Asi-ma!”
She looked for a while, then covered her face with her hands. “Time is mightier than your kisses.”
I took her on my lap and tried to console her. I called her a dozen pet names, I jested, I was serious, I promised her endless affection, I assured her that she was capable of perennial beauty. She wept quietly, uninterruptedly.
“What a child you are, Asi-ma! What does it matter if you have a few scratches? Besides I see none.”
“Must I wait until you notice them, Cartaphilus?”
“What do you mean?”
She did not answer. I did not press her. I feared her decision. I knew that although she had been a slave to my desires, she was capable of obstinate resolution. As long as she had not yet pronounced the words, however, I still hoped it was possible to comfort her. I thought of a new transfusion of blood, but “your blood is poison” struck against my ears like the blow of a fist.
“Besides, my dear, am I not getting older, also? Does not Time scratch my face as well?” I asked.
“No, Cartaphilus. You never grow older. You are a god; you brought rain to the city.”
“That…that…was merely a coincidence.”
She shook her head. “You have been since the beginning of things, and will continue forever, Cartaphilus.”
“You exaggerate my age a little, beloved.”
“No.”
We remained silent for a long time. I knew that she was planning what to do, and how to break the news to me.
“There is a full moon tonight, Cartaphilus.”
“Yes, my love.”
“That is a good omen.”
“Yes.”
“Tonight you shall make me your wife again under the moon, like the first time, beloved, and…and at dawn…I shall go away.”
“Go away?”
“I shall go back among the people that become old like myself. I shall marry, and have a child whom I shall name after you, Cartaphilus.”
“Asi-ma, your words are like so many daggers that stab my heart.”
She ruffled my hair playfully. “Those were the words you always spoke when we parted.”
“What do you mean, dear?”
“At every incarnation, after I had been your wife, when Time scratched my face, and I told you I was leaving, you always used the same words.”
“Asi-ma, that is only a dream.”
“You said even that.”
“Asi-ma, it is you who are a goddess.”
“No, not yet. At some future incarnation, you shall make me a goddess, Cartaphilus, and I shall remain with you always. But the day has not come yet.”
“Asi-ma, my dear, my perfect wife…since it is the will of Buddha that we separate, it is not you, but I, who must go.”
She thought for a while. “Yes, that is true. I had forgotten. It is always you who must go. You must wander about until we meet again.”
“Where and when shall I meet you again?”
“Who knows? It may be ten thousand miles from here. It may be ten thousand years…”
I opened the gate. Asi-ma accompanied me to the roadway. She threw herself into my arms.
“Farewell, Cartaphilus! “
“Farewell, my Much Beloved!”
“You must go on, Cartaphilus.”
Where had we met before? Had I lived other lives before I was Cartaphilus? Was the vista behind me as unending as the road, before me? Shuddering, I drew my cloak about me.
XVII: CAR-TA-PHAL, PRINCE OF INDIA—MARCUS AURELIUS—FAUSTINA TOYS—JESUS IN THE PANTHEON—THE FEMALE WORSHIPER
ONCE more I stood at the crossroads on the outskirts of Rome. I remembered the remark of the man made to me long ago: “All roads lead to Rome.” The man had turned to dust by this time; Nero, Poppaea, Sporus, Nero’s Golden House,—all dust. But all roads still led to Rome, and I, Cartaphilus, was still living, still young! I felt exalted.
The sun was setting very slowly, and like long streams of pollen dropping silently from some crushed, gigantic flower, its rays gilded the world. The day’s heat, dispersing in the cool breezes, scattered a perfume of grass and flowers and vine leaves.
This time it pleased me to enter the Eternal City neither as a Roman citizen nor as a Jew. I was Car-ta-phal, a Hindu Prince. In a splendid chariot and dressed in the Hindu fashion, with a belt and a turban glittering with jewels, I dashed into Rome. The sparks danced about the hoofs of my horses like small stars, and the populace, blasé and sophisticated, gaped in awe and admiration. Their Emperor was a philosopher affecting the black garb, but their instinct was for magnificence and display.
I succeeded in gaining the ear of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius by presenting him with rare manuscripts from the East. He invited me to hear him read one of his essays on virtue.
The reading room of the imperial Palace was poorly lit. Marcus Aurelius could not endure any glaring light. The large statues about the walls mingled their shadows, making curious and grotesque patterns. The guests were reclining on the couches, or standing in small groups, talking. I walked from one statue to another, approaching or standing at distance, feigning admiration. As a matter of fact, they were chiefly imitations from the Greek, and too bulky.
“Rome,” sighed an elderly artist, Apollodorus the sculptor, “is no longer the Rome of our fathers. The Christians are destroying our love of beauty. Even,” he whispered cautiously, “the Imperator’s philosophy has been influenced by them.”
“To what do you attribute this hatred for art?”
“They are really Hebrews whose god hates images.”
“Are the Hebrews a source of danger?”
“The Hebrews,” he laughed, “are no longer a nation.”
“Is that possible?”
“Ah, don’t you know? Their capital was burnt to the ground, and they were dispersed. It was about time.”
“Jerusalem has been razed to the ground?”
“Yes, some
years ago.”
“And their temple—I heard the Hebrews had a marvelous temple– —”
“We are building a temple to Jove on its site. If I were not so old, I would be sent to administer the work.”
I turned my face away. My eyes had filled with tears. Jerusalem…the Temple…burnt…and my people dispersed. All, all of us, wanderers like Cartaphilus!
The Emperor entered, his arm about the waist of the Empress. Everything was average about him. He was neither tall nor short; neither stocky nor thin; neither homely nor handsome. Even his hair was a mixture of gray and black, and his eyes were an indefinite brown that easily changed to gray. The Empress, Faustina, on the contrary, had very pronounced features: a sharp nose, sharp chin and black eyes that seemed sharp as daggers. Her teeth, as she smiled, were white as a young animal’s.
Marcus Aurelius seated himself on a throne at an angle of the room, and Faustina upon another one opposite him. Behind her cushioned chair stood a young slave with black curls and long slumberous lashes, waving a fan of white ostrich feathers. The Emperor did not like to be fanned, saying that a Stoic endured heat as well as cold, imperturbably. Apollodorus, who reclined on the couch next to me, whispered: “He catches cold too easily, that’s the reason, and he sneezes like a thunderclap.”
I made believe I did not hear him.
The Emperor began to read. His voice, too, had nothing distinctive, neither pleasing nor displeasing, running in a straight line somewhere between a bass and a tenor, except occasionally when it rose to a pitch and broke abruptly. Then he would clear his throat and begin again in a straight line.
“Everything which is in any way beautiful is beautiful in itself, and terminates in itself, not having praise as part of itself. Neither worse than nor better is a thing made by being praised,” continued the Emperor.
The Empress yawned. She motioned to the slave that fanned her to come to her right.
“Thou art a little soul, bearing about a corpse, as Epictetus used to say.”
Faustina’s right hand dropped leisurely over the chair and touched the boy.
The boy shivered.
“Does another do me wrong? Let him look to it. He has his own disposition, his own activity.”
The slave continued to fan his mistress, obedient to his training.
“Thou canst pass thy life in an equable flow of happiness, if thou canst go by the right way, and think and act in the right way.”
The Empress turned her head. This compelled the boy to move nearer.
The boy trembled.
The Empress smiled.
“Neither the labor which the hand does nor that of the foot is contrary to nature, so long as the foot does the foot’s work and the hand the hand’s.”
The fan almost dropped from the boy’s hand.
“Be thou erect, or be made erect.”
The boy straightened up as if in obedience to the Imperial command. His face was flushed but he still maintained his courtierlike demeanor. However, as he moved, the fan for a moment touched the face of the Empress.
“Different things delight different people.”
The Empress yawned. The boy bit his lips till they bled. The fan fluttered, tipped somewhat, and like a butterfly alighting on a rose, touched her breast lightly.
“Whatever one does or says, I must be good.”
Faustina was not listening to Marcus Aurelius. Amused by the perturbance of her toy she again, almost negligently, brushed the lad with her fingertips.
“Men will do the same things, nevertheless, even though they should burst.”
The boy’s heart must have been near bursting. He almost swayed, but he did not dare to interrupt the fan’s rhythmic motion.
Faustina continued to tantalize the lad.
“When thou wishest to delight thyself, think of the virtues of those who love with thee.”
Suddenly the gleam in the eyes of Faustina went out like a lamp. Her hand dropped slowly.
The Emperor arose. The audience exclaimed, “Magnificent! Profound! Unequaled!”
Marcus Aurelius motioned to the Empress to lead the guests into the banquet hall. Lazily the Empress draped her garments. The boy knelt at her feet. She ignored him. He crawled after her.
“Augusta! Faustina!”
The Empress looked straight ahead. The boy had ceased to exist.
Bewildered, the boy attempted to halt his mistress. She stepped upon his hand as if it were a thing of stone or an insect. The boy shivered from pain, but he crawled on, embracing her knee.
The boy’s lips moved. “I love you, I adore you,” he whispered.
The Empress motioned to a gigantic slave. Her face smiled but her lips said, “Flog him.”
The boy disappeared between the great arms of the man.
At the banquet messengers from the north and east reached the Emperor telling of the reverse of the Romans and the struggle with the Barbarians.
Marcus Aurelius spoke of the superiority of virtue and intelligence over brute force.
“I long for peace, Car-ta-phal,” he said to me. “Alas, the gods will it differently.”
He lowered his head, and kept silent for a while. He liked to attitudinize. “Much worse than the Barbarians are our enemies at home.”
“The Christians– —”
“Particularly the Christians. I have burnt them and thrown them to the lions and hounded them as unclean beasts, but all my efforts have been in vain.”
“Their religion, Your Majesty, glorifies martyrdom. If they are tortured to death, they are promised a whole eternity of pleasure in heaven. Who would not barter a few hours of agony for endless joy? The Christians, particularly, have the sense of the merchant. They were originally Hebrews.”
“That is true. But how shall I exterminate them?”
“What is more damning than half-praise?”
“An excellent aphorism, Car-ta-phal, but I fail to discover its application.”
He had already adapted several things I had said, and I knew that sooner or later my remark would appear in his Meditations.
“Recognize Jesus as a minor divinity…some half-forgotten Hindu god.”
“Perhaps,” the Imperator remarked, “he is a minor god. The world’s imagination is stale. People rarely invent new gods.”
“Your Majesty, why not admit Jesus officially to the Pantheon? Make him one of the gods, and he will be no longer the one god. Both Christians and Romans will forget their political grievances, buy sacrifices, and by invoking one additional divinity, will triumph against the Barbarians.”
“You are indeed my good counsellor, Car-ta-phal. I must propose your plan to the Senate.”
The temple was crowded with soldiers and women. The priests were busy taking offerings and sacrifices to the gods. Mars, above all, was invoked. But Venus was not neglected. It was difficult to push through the crowd, but I was obstinate. I would not leave the temple until I had seen the statue of the new god.
“Car-ta-phal,” some one called. I managed to turn my head, but could not swing my shoulders about.
“Apollodorus.”
“You are seeking what I seek, Car-ta-phal.”
We reached an angle which had the shape of a large alcove. “This must be it,” I said. Apollodorus, a little near-sighted, asked, “Which one?”
“The cross, look!”
He approached and looked intently. “What a hideous thing! A god upon a cross! A god with a writhing face and holes in his hands and feet! Car-ta-phal, it is horrible!”
Apollodorus laughed. “And I feared that Christianity would supplant our gods and our temples! A religion with a god on a cross, bleeding from his hands and his feet!”
I joined Apollodorus in laughter.
A woman, dressed in black, her face partly veiled, approached the cross, and knelt before it for a long while, then rose and, kissing the feet and hands, left.
“Apollodorus, we may still be wrong. We have forgotten woman. She is the mother. Sh
e pities…”
XVIII: THE EMPEROR-EMPRESS—HELIOGABALUS DANCES—THE GIANT
MARCUS AURELIUS was dead. Heliogabalus, the crowned transvestite, cuddled himself daintily on the throne of the Cæsars.
The people vociferated at the top of their voices that they were robbed to support an army too weak to cope with a band of undisciplined and uncouth Barbarians, and a monarch—from the East—who danced and painted his lips. Foreigners preferred not to accept the honor of Roman citizenship, and many Romans pretended to have been born in the provinces, for the taxes imposed upon the citizens were much higher than those upon subjects.
The mother of the Imperator was too hysterical and his ministers were too frivolous to govern; while he himself had become engrossed in the friendship for his adopted cousin, a taciturn young athlete, Bassianus Alexianus. His grandmother, however, who still retained a modicum of serenity and common sense, insisted that something had to be done, or the nation would rise in rebellion.
“What?” Heliogabalus shouted, exasperated.
“Augustus, High Priest of the Eternal Sun, man appreciates an unexpected gift a great deal more than that which is due him.”
The Emperor made no comment, but turned to me with the smile of a young coquette.
I remained silent.
He sighed, moved with profound pity for himself when I failed to respond. His effeminacy was too grotesque to intrigue me.
“Her Majesty’s logic is convincing,” I remarked, somewhat flatly.
“I hate logic.” Heliogabalus placed his small, soft hand upon his cousin’s shoulder.
“We are all children, Augustus,” the old Empress continued, “and children must be placated with gifts.”
“What shall I give them?”
“Your ancestors used to give them the circus, but they are bored with the games.”
“What shall I give them?”
“Your ancestors waged wars and returned triumphant, followed by captive kings and princes and chariots overbrimming with precious jewels and gold.”
The Emperor’s face, delicate and small, flushed. His nostrils shivered and his lips, fleshy but well-chiseled, lengthened in disdain. “I hate war! It is the work of butchers and cutthroats.” And addressing Bassianus, he continued: “Not that I dislike blood. The High Priest of the Sun knows the beauty of sacrifice. But it must be shed delicately, at leisure, amidst joy and merriment. Blood, like wine, should be drunk out of golden goblets. Am I not right, Bassianus?”
[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew Page 10