[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew

by Viereck, George Sylvester

  “The last one who mentioned it was Goethe, the German poet. I visited him at the termination of the French Revolution, which broke out as you surmised, not long after your departure. Alas, he was as garrulous as an old woman and much more interested in the medal which Napoleon had pinned upon his chest and court intrigues than in Homunculus.”

  “Homuncula, Cartaphilus. It would be futile to create a man…”

  “Goethe shared your opinion, Salome:

  ‘Das Unbeschreibliche

  Hier ist’s getan,

  Das Ewig Weibliche

  Zieht uns hinan.’ ”

  “Goethe understood,” Salome remarked.

  “He was blinded by his sexual nature. If he had been true to his own philosophy he would have concluded Faust:

  ‘Das Unbeschreibliche

  Hier ist’s getan,

  Das Ewig Weibliche

  Zieht uns hinan.’

  Man is the creative principle!”

  “Man is critical, not creative! Woman is the dark, the terrible Mother!” Salome exclaimed proudly.

  “Goethe anticipates this, though he senses the horror of the Dark Mother… ‘Muetter—schreckliches Wort!’ ”

  “ ‘Schrecklich’ in the sense of ‘tremendous.’ He is right,” Salome explained. “Over all mythologies hover the Norns, dark feminine creatures, mistresses of life and death. Goethe’s mind caught a glimpse of the truth!”

  “The truth, perhaps, is the union of the Eternal Feminine and the Eternal Masculine—Salome and Cartaphilus!”

  She smiled. “Perhaps. What more did Goethe tell you?”

  “He was too elated over Napoleon’s colored ribbon which hung upon his chest to indulge in philosophy.”

  “Who is this Napoleon, seducer of poets?”

  “It is true,—you have been here for a century and a half…”

  “During which time I refused to remember the rest of the world,” she interrupted.

  “Napoleon became the emperor of France after the revolution proved a futile gesture.”

  “As it was bound to prove.”

  “We have seen so many revolutions, Salome, and so many emperors…”

  I plucked a beetle which unfolded its hard wings, becoming a violet as blue as if a bit of Italian sky had been torn off and made more luminous by long polish.

  “Napoleon, not taller than this shrub, galloped across Europe, his hand thrust into his uniform, his lips pouting, his brows knit, one curl—the last remnant of his hair—in disarray upon his forehead. Kings, princes, emperors, dismayed, dashed precipitously, leaving their thrones and their countries to the mercy of the Upstart. The vacant thrones he refilled with the members of his family; the treasures and museums he looted and transferred to Paris; the poets he corrupted by pinning medals on their chests. He passed through the world like a thunder-storm.”

  Salome smiled.

  I laughed heartily. “Il fait gémir le monde parce qu’il est incapable de faire gémir la paillasse. This is what a Polish Countess related to me. Napoleon had taken a great fancy to this lady who at first snubbed him, preferring me. His Majesty was infuriated. The countess was pretty, but not unusually so. ‘A splendid animal,’ Napoleon had called her. I pleaded with her. It was madness to refuse an Emperor and it might prove disastrous to her country. She consented to share the imperial couch.”

  Salome smiled. “Cartaphilus must have felt thrilled to think of his own magnanimity, relinquishing his mistress to the emperor.”

  “After all, he was only a mortal!… Well, Madame la Comtesse reappeared the next day, shaking with laughter. Mais, ma chère, qu’y a-t-il? When she managed to restrain her convulsions, she said: ‘Napoleon est un très grand empereur mais un très petit homme.’

  “For two days and two nights, I had to quench the fires which His Majesty had kindled but was unable to quell.”

  “What happened to this grand empereur?”

  “He was finally defeated by all the monarchs combined who imprisoned him upon an island where he died, poor fellow, devoured by vermin and vanity.”

  “Stupid mankind!” Salome exclaimed. “Is the New World different from Europe?”

  “The New World, ma très chère, imitates the old. It has copied its vices perfectly and its virtues clumsily.”

  “Ah, by the way, did you see Dr. Benjamin Franklin, Cartaphilus, as I suggested in my letter?”

  “I saw Franklin.”

  “What sort of man was he?”

  “He looked like a debauched woman, was as practical as a Jewish peddler, had the imagination of a dray horse, uttered advices like a successful grocer—except once.” I laughed. “He told me not to get married but choose an elderly lady for a companion. It was cheaper, safer, her body was generally much younger than her face, and above all, she was grateful!”

  Salome laughed. “Rather clever. And did you give him the money?”

  “Certainly. But it was a bad investment. The Americans were so inconceivably sentimental that they considered a debt incurred for the sake of their liberty in the nature of a gift. The politicians could not conceive that any man desired to recover his money after such a splendid victory and the establishment of a democracy. I did not insist. America appeared as too profitable a field for future investments. Indeed, at present, I rule the world from the world’s new center—New York…”

  “Le grand Empereur!” Salome laughed ironically.

  “L’homme encore plus grand!” I added.

  “Vanity, thy name is Cartaphilus!” she exclaimed.

  Kotikokura reclined underneath a palm tree. A half dozen monkeys were playing about him. One of them, perched upon his knee, shrieked. Kotikokura answered him. There was a general noise like a tumultuous laughter.

  Kotikokura began to play on his flute. The monkeys made a circle about his feet and listened, enraptured. The peacocks approached, spreading their tails. Small birds alighted and remained motionless. The swans stretched their necks, opening and shutting their bills. A squirrel, his tail in the air, dropped the nut which he had held in his forepaws, and did not budge. The tortoise approached, its head in the air like a priest at prayer. Several servants emerged from various parts of the house, open-eyed and open-mouthed. The major-domo stood in the distance, his large hands upon his enormous belly, his flat feet beating time.

  Salome appeared on the balcony.

  I threw her a kiss. She threw me a rose.

  “Today you shall see the Homuncula, Cartaphilus,” Salome whispered. “Come.”

  Salome locked and unlocked several iron doors. We walked through corridors, halls, rooms, turned in strange mazes, climbed and descended stairs.

  “Why the secrecy, ma chère?” I ventured to ask.

  “Is it not self-evident, my friend? I have been at work for a century and a half. A stupid servant, an over-curious guest might annul my labors. You are the only person who will see the Homuncula.”

  “I am grateful for your confidence, Salome.”

  “You and I,—are we not the sole gods of the world, the sole survivors of the Tempest of Time?”

  “We must never separate again, my love.”

  “Don’t be mawkish, mon cher. The survivors of a tempest need not necessarily, as in romantic books, marry and live happy ever after.”

  “It is less ridiculous than walking each his own way among the débris.”

  “You are the Eternal Youth.”

  “My glands function perfectly, Salome. That is all. Steinach, a great Austrian scientist examined me not long ago. I think I could die in an accident. But my glands are extraordinary. The glands which, in the average person, secret the seed of new life, constantly pour new vitality into the stream of my blood like the fresh sap of a tree. Man is immortal through his progeny. I am my own progeny. I remain always young and always sterile.”

  “Glands– —” Salome meditated, placing the key into the door.

  “It is not Jesus who gave me life, Salome. His eyes conveyed a powerful shock
to my nervous system which, in some inexplicable way, altered the mechanism that controls my secretions. It may be possible, some day, by applying electricity or the X-ray, to produce the same result in all men. We shall have, then, a race of immortals.”

  “No, no!” Salome exclaimed. “I hope that will never occur, Cartaphilus! The people who are alive today are so ridiculously constituted, so slightly endowed with the capacity for pleasure or thought that a life beyond the ordinary one would change earth into hell.”

  “Let us impregnate with our own immortality only those who deserve it.”

  “A perilous venture! Besides, who deserves immortality?”

  “There are a few men, Salome, whose personalities partake of the eternal flame. Alas, their glands age and die!”

  “Only the descendants of my Homuncula will merit immortality and shall have it, Cartaphilus.”

  She opened the door to a vast room which, contrary to the habitation of Bluebeard’s Homunculus, was scented with strange and delicious perfumes. A garden blossomed out of the walls and ceiling. In the center, a magnificent statue lay outstretched upon a couch.

  “My Homuncula,” Salome said proudly.

  “Salome is greater than Phidias.”

  “Oh art, Cartaphilus—it is but child’s play. Homuncula lives!”

  “Of what material is she fashioned?”

  “The essence of flesh.”

  I looked at her, perplexed.

  “You cannot understand it, Cartaphilus. I have discovered strange things.”

  “Strange indeed, Incomparable One!”

  I approached the Homuncula. Salome held my arm. “Do not stir, Cartaphilus. You must not go near her. Watch from a distance. Look,—is she not made for pleasure such as even you and I have not experienced?”

  “She resembles Herma,” I remarked.

  “But Herma—poor human child—was neither man nor woman completely. My Homuncula is both perfectly. Every atom of her body is constructed for joy. Jahveh, in His hurry, created man for the purpose of living merely. Pleasure was only an impetus toward existence. It was not life’s very purpose. Mind, too, was merely a substitute for deficient muscle. Man was mud electrified. My Homuncula is of the very essence of life. Death cannot overcome her. Therefore she will be able to devote herself to joy with abandon!…”

  “Salome is a glorious artist!” I exclaimed.

  “My Homuncula will not know the ugliness and travail of bearing children.”

  “How then– —?”

  “Why were the birds favored by Jahveh? Why cannot man be born like the bird?”

  “Will the descendants of Homuncula be both man and woman?” I asked.

  “Of course. ‘Male and female created He them.’ How can they know perfect joy save by being both man and woman? Jahveh reserved this double boon for the snail. I give it to the creature I have fashioned, not for my pleasure, but for her own. But we have remained here too long, Cartaphilus. We may disturb subtle bio-chemical processes. Homuncula is not yet entirely alive. She is still, as it were, in the womb of creation…”

  Salome was feeding the swans. They placed their flat bills in her hand and wound their necks about her wrist. “Cartaphilus, whom else did you see after the French Revolution who is worthy of memory?”

  “In France, I met Heine, a Jewish poet, driven out of Germany by the intolerance of the princes and his very thrifty family, who insisted upon making him a banker. What a sharp mind Heine possessed and what a tender heart! A typical Jew, Salome. It is strange how that race persists.”

  “Has America produced any people worthy of consideration?”

  “America!” I laughed. “I had a strange experience there.”

  “What was it, Cartaphilus? I am in a mood for gossip.”

  “The American women are the most beautiful in the world. Many of them partake of the epicene charm which the Greeks gave to their immortal statues. I fell in love—mildly, naturally. Always the vision of Salome eclipses all my amorous fancies…”

  Salome smiled. “Cartaphilus speaks always with one objective in mind. And they say that Man can discuss impersonally!”

  I smiled. “May I not wind my neck around your wrist like that fortunate swan?”

  Salome placed her arm about me.

  “Oh, that I were a swan and– —”

  “Come, come—tell me about your experience in America.”

  “Well, I fell in love with a young girl whose name was Jackie—in some ways more boy than girl.”

  “All beauty wavers between the two sexes,” Salome interposed.

  “In our perambulations, we crossed from one state into another—a nominal frontier, you understand. We registered at a Philadelphia hotel as Mr. and Mrs. Peterson. The night was spent in tepid pleasure. Mrs. Peterson was as sentimental as she was passionless. She had the intelligence of a gosling which was most incongruous with the splendid poise of her physique. But I had already discovered the frequency of this discrepancy and the surprise was not as great as the annoyance.

  “In the morning, an officer of the police knocked at the door. I was accused of abduction. All explanation was futile. My offense consisted, not in seducing the girl, but in crossing the state line. If I had remained with her in New York, no minion of the law could have interfered with my pleasure. I had crossed into another state and the law allowed of no ignorance. Besides, it seemed that morality was becoming too lax of late. I had desecrated the sacredness of the American hearth. Americans utter their platitudes more eloquently than any other people of the globe. I was given the choice between marrying Jackie or going to prison for many years. Neither appealed to me. However, I knew of a positive antidote to morality, an antidote which, by the way, is far more efficient in America than anywhere else.

  “ ‘How much?’ I asked, with the characteristic brevity of the new land. The gentleman of the police mentioned a sum which he snatched out of my hand. Without even thanking me, he left, warning me that the next time I committed this dastardly crime, I should have to go to prison for years under the Federal statute or—’Double my money,’ I said ironically.

  “Jackie glared at me. ‘What about me?’ she demanded.

  “ ‘How much?’

  “Her price was exactly ten times his for she clamored that she was a decent girl misled by me. The swiftness with which she grasped the situation—for I am quite certain it was not a preconceived trap—was typical of her race. A child of ten in that country speaks in terms of capital and interest, and at seventy, he still retains this terminology. I gave her what she asked. She threw her arms about me. ‘You are a brick, old man!’ she shouted, which means in that country of eternal slang that I was generous and a man of principle.

  “ ‘Why don’t you marry me, Pete dear?’ she asked, her feminine sentimentality reasserting itself.

  “ ‘I shall return in a few centuries, Jackie, my love. Perhaps by that time, you will have developed a mentality compatible with your magnificent physique…’

  “She did not wait for me to finish my sentence, gave me a violent blow on the chest and left me, shouting: ‘You’re a nut!’—which I learnt later was a man who had different views from the others, thought differently, or whose appearance suggested culture. ‘You’re a nut!’ is as terrible an indictment in modern America as ‘You are a witch’ was during the time of the Puritans. Indeed, so fearful are the Americans of being ‘nuts’ that even the cultured and the learned vociferate: ‘We are just like the rest; we are lowbrows; we are not “nuts”!’

  “In a world of geese, can you conceive the hatred they would bear a swan who suddenly raised his graceful neck like the one who seeks your lovely hands, ma chère?”

  Salome smiled.

  “A week later, I left the New World. I shall return, as I promised, in a few centuries…”

  “And the American man, Cartaphilus?”

  “The American man,” I laughed. “His history is divided into three chapters—he is successively the slave of his moth
er, of his wife, and of his daughter. The American man? Salome, even the most zealous feminist would be inspired with pity. The African Tribe over which you ruled, ma chère, has been transplanted to the New World…”

  “I am right, Cartaphilus,—the earth must be populated with a new race. The descendants of Adam are intolerable in whatever continent we place them.”

  “There are still a few men here and there, Salome, whose existence compensates for the ugliness and stupidity and cruelty of the rest.”

  “You are the eternal optimist, Cartaphilus.”

  “In England, there is George Bernard Shaw, a white-headed Lucifer,—witty and wise. He believes that if man willed intensely to live, he could prolong his life indefinitely.”

  “Truly, I must hurry with my Homuncula before the children of Jahveh discover the secret of longevity,” Salome interposed.

  “In England, also, I met a man by the name of Havelock Ellis,—the purest intellect since Apollonius whom he resembles, physically even, save that the beautiful dark eyes of the Greek have become a magnificent blue. He lives as simply as Spinoza. He has written as no man before him of the delights of sex. If such a man lived for a thousand years– —”

  “We cannot populate the earth with a handful of men.”

  “Then there are a few Jews who have revolutionized the torpid mind of man. Einstein has rediscovered and amplified my law of relativity, Freud has reinterpreted the meaning of immortality…”

  “How?”

  “Within our subconscious minds, we carry our own history and maybe the history of the race.”

  “That is not a new conception. In Greece, and in India, I knew several philosophers who held similar ideas.”

  “Freud has given life a new face. He teaches man to know himself without being ashamed of himself.”

  Salome shook off the particles of bread that clung to her fingertips and taking my arm, we walked slowly between the rows of palm trees.

  “In Switzerland, I met a man by the name of Lenin,—a strange being, a Russian nobleman. He was a veritable volcano. If this man ever seizes the reins, the world will certainly accelerate its rotation.”