Kotikokura rode at my side. From time to time, I would tell him something. His answers were invariably a grin or a half-articulate growl. Nevertheless, I felt that somehow he understood me, perhaps better than any human being I had known through the centuries.
What united him to me? Was it merely because he had been my companion for so long, or because he had rebelled, as I had, against some irrational divinity? Was the Hindu doctor right, perhaps, that the blood contained the soul and the life of man, and Kotikokura having partaken of my blood had become, in some mysterious way—myself—an inarticulate elemental self,—a self long buried within me, which I no longer knew or recognized?
Had I always been a rebel, from the very beginning of life? How many gods had I mocked or destroyed? Was Jesus but the mightiest of them all? Was he the only god—who could not be mocked with impunity?
“What god did you laugh at, long ago, in Africa, because of which you have become—Kotikokura?”
“Ca-ta-pha.”
“What! You laughed at Ca-ta-pha?”
He nodded.
“You believe in God Ca-ta-pha, and you laughed at him?”
He grinned.
“Do you still laugh at him?”
He nodded.
Did he understand me? Was he merely jesting? Could one mock and believe at the same time…perhaps love and hate also? Was it possible that I, too, believed in, and disbelieved, hated—and loved, Jesus?
Bagdad was in a chattering and disputatious mood. Abu-Bekr had just died, and his successor had not yet been named. But since the Prophet was no longer doubted, nor his ascension to Heaven, nor his Word, which had been copied by a thousand scribes, and memorized by all the priests and saintly men, I had neither anything to fear, nor anything to suggest. Whoever might be the man of destiny, the destiny of the new religion was to conquer the East—to crush the religion of the Nazarene.
“Kotikokura, upon that hill yonder, hidden by palm trees like a canopy, through the long thin rents of which one sees the Tigris flow quietly toward the Red Sea, there is a castle with an enormous orchard and a magnificent garden. We shall retire to it, Kotikokura, and forget for a long while the futile clamor of things.”
Kotikokura grinned, delighted. The castle belonged to a Prince who had squandered his patrimony in gambling and orgies and needed ready cash to pay his debts.
I hired five hundred craftsmen and gardeners, whose labor turned the palace into a dazzling jewel, and the garden into another Eden. I wandered about the great halls and the magnificent flower-beds, vastly bored. Kotikokura followed me, generally silent and as disconsolate. He reflected my emotions like a sensitized shadow.
“Kotikokura, my friend, life has no meaning in itself, and the days are like great iron balls chained about our necks, if we cannot discover an all-absorbing passion; if we cannot immerse ourselves in some labor or pleasure.
“When I feared that my life had reached its terminus I vowed I would not let time fly past me again.
“I would capture each hour, like a beautiful, rare bird and pluck from it whatever mystery, or good, or evil it offered. Nevertheless, my friend, here we are, both of us supremely bored in the most beautiful castle of Bagdad, and the most gorgeous garden in Araby.”
Kotikokura sighed.
“I begin to understand and forgive the gods the torture they inflict upon us, seeing how much more bored they must be than we.”
“Ca-ta-pha—God.”
“Ca-ta-pha has but one believer, hardly enough to establish a new religion.”
Kotikokura remained pensive. I plucked a rose, and gave it to him. He placed it between his teeth.
We seated ourselves upon a bench made of ivory. Its legs had the shape of many snakes intertwined.
“Two weapons only, two dazzling swords, can dispel the shadow, black and heavy, as a thing of iron, that God Ennui, squatting at all four corners of the earth, casts upon the world,—sex and knowledge. I am fortunate, Kotikokura, for what country offers more delectable women, and more profound mathematicians? With women and mathematics let us multiply pleasure.”
Kotikokura grinned, and removing the rose from his lips, placed it over his ear.
I invited Ali Hasan, famous mathematician, and Mamduh Barazi, formerly Lord Procurer to the Vizier, to pay me a visit. They appeared at the same time, bowing many times before me, wishing me endless life and prosperity beyond the dream of man. They were about the same age, and dressed in the manner of princes, wide belts, studded with jewels, and turbans, in which dazzled the crescent moon. I could not decide who was the Procurer and who the Mathematician. I smiled.
“Can you judge a man’s profession by his appearance?” one of them asked, guessing my thought.
“Marcus Aurelius, an ancient Emperor and philosopher of Rome, thought he could read a face like a manuscript. At the very moment when his lips formed this assertion, however, the Empress toyed amorously with a lusty young slave.”
“Some faces, my Lord, are limpid like crystals; others, however, are like mother-of-pearl, changing colors at every angle.”
The word ‘angle’ suggested the mathematician. I looked at the man who spoke. “I have the honor of addressing Ali Hasan.”
He shook his head. “My Lord is mistaken.”
We laughed. I invited them to spend a few weeks with me.
We were reclining on the wide benches that faced the lake, upon which twelve white and twelve black swans sailed motionless and silent, like dreams. A slave filled our cups with wine. Both Ali Hasan and Mamduh Barazi had joined the new religion of the Prophet Mohammed, but neither believed that water was to be henceforth the sole drink of man.
“The Prophet speaks of a limpid drink,” said Ali. “Is not wine limpid?”
“The Prophet said that the understanding should not be beclouded. Is not wine like some cool, fresh wind, that chases the clouds from the face of thought, which shines henceforth like a sun?” added Mamduh.
“Abdul Ben Haru, my teacher and the greatest of mathematicians, drank deeply indeed, saying that only thus could he be in perfect harmony with the Earth, which he called the futile dolorous turning of a thing nearly circular.”
“And what is more important and more beautiful than harmony?”
“My excellent guests, you have uttered the word that I have been seeking for a long time: harmony. But is it not more difficult to be in harmony with one’s self than with the Universe?”
“The final proof of any problem, Cartaphilus, splendid host, is the balance of its equations,” said Ali.
“The perfect satisfaction of the senses uniting with the perfect satisfaction of the mind, is the most perfect equation,” added Mamduh.
“I have been more fortunate than the rest of mankind in having discovered Ali Hasan and Mamduh Barazi.”
They rose, and bowed touching the ground with their foreheads.
“While Ali Hasan shall explain to me the mystery of numbers, Mamduh Barazi shall solve for me the mystery of the senses.”
Our cups were filled again and again. Kotikokura made a wreath of wine-leaves, and placed it upon his head.
“Bacchus!” I called to him. He grinned.
My guests and I discussed the science of numbers in love and in mathematics. Our words came more and more lazily out of our mouths, and one by one, we fell asleep.
XXXVI: THE ORCHESTRATION OF DELIGHT—KOTIKOKURA’S HAREM—THE KING OF LOVE—THE BATH OF BEAUTY—UNSOLVED PROBLEMS
MAMDUH had both taste and understanding. The Vizier whom he had previously served was not merely a sensualist, but an æsthete and a poet. Mamduh appreciated my caprices. Every new denizen of my harem was to remind me, however obscurely, of some love that had delighted me in the past; at the same time, she must harmonize with her sisters. They must be notes in a large orchestral composition, conceived solely for my amusement. Thus I hoped to resurrect the past, and create a new present, achieving perfect unity out of diversity.
The result, always strange, w
as sometimes ludicrous or pathetic. I saw Lydia’s eyes look out of Poppaea’s face, Ulrica’s hair blazed upon the head of Pilate’s wife, Flower-of-the-Evening’s tiny hand fluttered, accompanied by the voice of Mary…
Once I thought that I had discovered John and Mary in one envelope of feminine flesh. My heart leaped within me like some startled animal. I touched her. She laughed raucously. Her laughter sounded like Nero’s. Her gums covered a large part of the teeth. Nevertheless, I made her my favorite, on condition that she never open her mouth in my presence. She was excessively ticklish, however, and could restrain neither her laughter nor her prattle.
Meanwhile, Mamduh, traveled from city to city in search of new beauty. My harem became famous throughout Arabia.
I built an enormous wall around my estate, and within it my mistresses wandered, displaying their charms, and chattering endlessly. Sixty giant eunuchs, with drawn swords, walked among them, settling disputes, punishing or admonishing like judges, and calling out at my approach: “Our master! Kneel! Kneel! Our master!”
Kotikokura became my chief steward, and relegated to himself a small number of women, black and yellow-skinned. He seemed to relish mistresses in whom the attributes of femininity were enormously emphasized.
“What lost love do you seek among them, Kotikokura?”
He grinned.
“Even in our first amours, Kotikokura, we seek something that came before them perhaps in some dimly remembered dream, or in some dimly remembered life…”
He scratched his nose, and rearranged his turban.
I distributed my harem, like a strange and complicated chess. Sooner or later, I hoped, by divers moves, to capture the King of Love—Perfection. I tried the ways of Flower-of-the-Evening, but before long her devices began to pall. They left the board in disarray, without checkmating the King. I invented new and fantastic moves by applying the law of permutation, which I had just learned from my wise teacher.
I achieved an infinity of variations.
I built many pavilions, the pavilion of color, the pavilion of perfume, the pavilion of touch, the pavilion of size. Pleasure was a thousand-stringed harp. Each note, each shade, melted almost imperceptibly into the next. Eyes, tiny and brilliant as beads, softened until I met the tender glance of the wounded gazelle. Blackest skin turned to brown, brown to yellow, yellow to white. There were breasts like hillocks rising upward; breasts like enormous grapes hanging from a vine; breasts like fists of rock; breasts like hazel-nuts whose sharp points were dotted scarlet.
Love assumed numberless hues and numberless shapes. Hair short and stiff like quills, melting into masses of gold, flowing about the ankles; hips round and wide as hoops, dwindling until they became straight vertical lines; perfumes pungent as the taste of green apples upon the edges of teeth, luxuriant as of roses full-blown, delicate as the air at dawn; lips thin as a line drawn with the point of an artist’s brush, thickening, broadening, until they filled the mouth like ripe fire-colored pomegranates, whose honey overruns.
I was the master harpist, playing string after string. The sound was often pleasurable, but the tune lacked perfection. I combined pavilion with pavilion; mingled incongruities, uniting the grotesque and the abnormal, the monstrous and the normal.
Always the King of Love eluded me, playing hide-and-seek, mocking, laughing…
I consulted with Mamduh. His advice was intelligent and the result of much experience, but always in the end futile.
“I shall devise a tune that will bring all strings into play at once… Do you think I can thus ensnare Pleasure?”
Mamduh combed his beard leisurely with his fingers. Evading somewhat my question, he answered: “Who shall play the tune more perfectly than Cartaphilus?”
Petals of flowers covered the garden with a heavy carpet. The resources of the entire harem were enlisted for the Bath of Beauty.
I was a rock in the midst of a vast sea of flesh, perfumed with a thousand scents, moving and undulating above and below me… Billows rising and falling, accompanied by stifled murmurs and groans—waves caressing and laving, like soft tongues, or beating against me like open palms—my body ablaze in an ocean of concupiscence, delighted and tortured…an amorous delirium—a nightmare and a gorgeous dream—an orgy of lust… Jets of love, quivering and hot, splashing back into the flames—billows rising and beating the rock—obstinate, determined… Breasts and buttocks and mouths and hands and bellies—a fury of passion, laughing, weeping, groaning…
A muscular rock, still inexorable, still unyielding—a thousand tongues of flame surrounding it, seeking to melt it—beating against it like hammers, scorching, tearing, lapping…
A sea stiffened by the furious caress of the tempest. Then a sea without motion. The rock crumbled into the billows. Hot ashes smothered the flames, but left still unextinguished, the volcano beneath.
Where was the King of Love? My hand sought, but captured only shadows… My eyes glared, but discovered nothing… My ears heard, in the distance…laughter…like the laughter of Salome…
“Do you believe that a thousand women equal one Salome, Kotikokura?”
He walked off, suddenly remembering something which needed his immediate attention.
“My excellent friends,” I said to Ali and Mamduh, “is it possible to achieve unity through diversity?”
Ali shrugged his shoulders and replied with a long string of incomprehensible equations.
Mamduh, more practical, however, replied. “There is always some virgin, harboring some unsuspected delight.”
“No, no, Mamduh, my harem is already more numerous than King Solomon’s, who also sought—and in vain—the one perfect queen. The multiplication table cannot help me solve the problem of love. No, Mamduh, seek no more. Your exquisite taste has already accomplished miracles. But, alas, however many zeroes we add to a number, infinity remains distant and unapproachable…
“Beauty, my friends, is a magnificent vase, broken into a thousand parts. However expert we may be at piecing them together again, some chip is missing, or is wrongly united, and if, by some supreme good fortune, we restore the vessel to its original form, we cannot hide from the touch, the cicatrice, the scar where we have joined them together.”
My friends tried to console me.
“Perhaps man should not seek to remember, but rather to forget…” I suggested.
I ordered festivities, such as Nero and Heliogabalus had never dreamt of. I invited the Rajahs and the Princes of many cities. The most famous cooks of Arabia prepared dishes of so many varieties that names could no longer be invented for them. Wines of fifty nations flowed incessantly into golden goblets. My harem danced before us to the music of all races, and at night procured us tortures that delighted, and pleasures that agonized.
Some guests, unable to endure the torments of delight, left. Many, persisting, succumbed. Among these were my two dear masters, Ali and Mamduh. At last, only Kotikokura and myself remained,—perennial survivors of the cataclysm of joy.
“Are we owls, Kotikokura, perching forever upon ruins?”
He grinned.
My women, woefully decimated, wandered in the garden, like strange peacocks, endeavoring to entice me. I saw merely the ugly feet. I heard only disagreeable voices.
“What shall I do with these creatures, Kotikokura? I can neither take them with me, should I desire to continue my wanderings, nor can I leave them here, to starve. After all, there was something of beauty in them, something that reminded me of the unforgettable past. Should Ca-ta-pha imitate other gods, who send floods and earthquakes when they can no longer endure the sight of their creatures?”
He shook his head.
“Should not Ca-ta-pha be more reasonable and more kindly?”
He nodded.
“Very well, then, Kotikokura, since we have so much time at our disposal, we shall be merciful and just. We shall wait patiently until these creatures die, one by one, and when the last is gone, we can continue our journey… Meanwhile,
there are many problems that my late master, Ali—may he be happy in Paradise—has left unfinished; problems that merit solution.”
XXVII: THE MASTER OF THE HAREM—TIME DISAPPEARS—I DISCOVER RELATIVITY—FUNERALS—KOTIKOKURA ACCELERATES FATE—THE MOSQUE OF A THOUSAND GRAVES
ALI had found in me an apt pupil. My theories made the heart of the mathematician leap. I unfolded to him the knowledge I had gathered in the monasteries of Thibet. I recounted bold astronomical formulæ which I had worked out, assisted by the secret lore of the Hindus, while Asi-ma, the Rajah’s sister, purred at my feet like a magnificent lioness.
“Heaven descended into the eyes of my beloved, Ali, and it was both easy and delectable to learn the secrets of the stars.”
He sighed.
“Where is Heaven, in truth, Ali?”
“It all depends.”
“Upon what?”
“Upon where a man happens to be.”
Our discussion, purely sentimental, suggested an idea which I could not formulate clearly at the moment it took place, but which now, since the death of Ali and my futile orgies, had taken complete possession of me. If heaven depended upon one’s position, did not the earth depend upon one’s position also? Did everything depend upon one’s position? What, then, was Truth? An entity—eternal and unchangeable—or a variable thing, fluctuating with one’s position? And Time—was that not purely an illusion, nonexistent, perhaps? Had not some years appeared to me shorter than hours, and could I not remember some hours longer than years?
“Kotikokura, henceforth you are the lord of the harem, and master supreme of my earthly goods. Ca-ta-pha retires to his tower, to meditate upon time and space and the final meaning of truth.”
Kotikokura took my hands in his, and looked into my eyes, his own filled with tears.
[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew Page 18