My First Two Thousand Years
The Autobiography of the Wandering Jew
George Sylvester Viereck
Paul Eldridge
PROLOGUE: MOUNT ATHOS
I: THE SEVEN PLOVERS
THE sun hurled spears of fire at the golden cross crowning the marble peak of Mount Athos.
Suddenly the flaming glory was darkened by the shadows of seven black-breasted plovers hovering for a moment, as if in deliberation, over the ivy-crowned tower of the monastery, and vanishing with a shrill cry.
“What an unearthly sound!” exclaimed Aubrey Lowell.
“Their screams,” remarked his companion, a German of colossal stature, “echo the sounds of the battle-fields over which they have flown.”
“It is incomprehensible to me by what subterranean channels the Holy Fathers keep in touch with the outside world, in times such as these,” Aubrey remarked.
“Not many months ago,” Professor Bassermann replied, dropping his voice to a whisper, “a mutiny against the Government broke out on a Russian warship. Eluding the Grand Fleet, at least thirty of the officers and the men landed, no one knows where. A little later thirty newcomers, holy hermits, no doubt, sought refuge in one of the monasteries.”
“I presume,” Aubrey said, “the Holy Fathers were not pleased by this invasion.”
“The Holy Fathers,” Professor Bassermann continued, “are desperately afraid of being drawn into a political controversy, and are in mortal terror of the long arm of the Czar, and of the Kaiser. It is fortunate that our diplomatic friend in Constantinople secured an introduction to Father Ambrose for us. In such perilous times every traveler is subject to suspicion and may be denied an asylum. Fate was in an ironical mood when she tempted us to go globe-trotting during a World War. Who knows how long we may be compelled to wait here, until we receive our visa!”
“Meanwhile,” Aubrey said, “we can probe the mysteries of the place. I am sure every shrine has its secrets. In every fold of the altar cloth rustles a century. Even in the sunshine, the ghosts of past generations seem to wander about.”
“You are in a mood for fantasy, my friend,” replied the other.
“In a spot where for twelve centuries men’s minds have dwelt upon the eternal, everything seems to glow with hidden significance. Here all things are possible.”
Their ears caught the rustling of wings overhead. Once more a shadow flitted over the landscape.
“What is that?” asked Basil Bassermann.
“Plovers—seven plovers. This is the second time they have flown over the belfry.”
“You counted them?”
“Yes, and I counted seven,” Aubrey remarked. “The very atmosphere admits of no other number.”
“Superstition is a form of atavism to which all minds are subject. Even my blood,” Professor Bassermann conceded somewhat ponderously, “feels the dust of ages rising from all these ancient objects.”
“What a confession for the foremost scientist of Harvard!” Aubrey taunted the old professor. “You know,” he added after a pause, knitting his brow to recapture a thought, “I have studied the history of superstition a little. There is an ancient story about seven plovers. The seven soldiers who assisted at the crucifixion were transformed into plovers, doomed to circle the sky forever.”
“Perhaps it means that we shall never get our visa,” Professor Bassermann remarked with a wry face. “Are your sacred fowls harbingers of evil? Our old peasants always say that plovers prophesy rain.”
“They foretell something. What it is, however, has for the moment escaped me.”
He nervously passed his hand through his hair.
“We are both tired and overwrought from travel,” Professor Bassermann interjected. “There is a tension in the air which affects even me. Surely of all places this must be the very hotbed of superstition. By the way, do you know that Father Ambrose, as soon he divests himself of his stole, is a remarkable psychologist? Most of the monks here are crude and ignorant, but he has studied the library of Mount Athos, the oldest in the world, and is acquainted with the history of mental science from Aristotle to Freud. You will probably find that many of your ideas are in sympathy with his. He is a mystic.”
“What is a mystic, Professor?”
“You’re half a mystic. A part of your brain is open to the lantern of knowledge, but there are dark alleys in those gray convolutions that shut themselves stubbornly to facts.”
“To facts, perhaps, not to truth.”
“Truth is based on facts, Aubrey. There can be no valid truth outside of human experience.”
“I,” Aubrey replied, “seek a reconciliation between the miraculous and science, between the revealed and the unrevealed mysteries.”
“Ignoramus, Ignorabimus,” Professor Bassermann sighed. “We know not, and we shall not know. We can cut up a body or dissect a nerve, but the vital essence eludes us forever. Yet very likely your seven fowls presage some mysterious visitor or some startling event. While we are chatting aimlessly, the belligerents are upsetting the map of Europe.”
“The peak on which we are standing has seen many revolutions of the wheel of fate. If only,” Aubrey remarked dreamily, “the rock could speak, what marvelous tales it could unfold! Inanimate stones would be more eloquent than the camera, if we only knew the secret that loosens their tongues.”
“Meanwhile we must depend upon annals written by man,” Bassermann drily insisted.
“Man could tell more than the stone if he were able to release the race memory that survives in the primordial cell. Forever dividing, but never perishing, it is his nearest approach to immortality.”
“I am afraid, my dear Aubrey, that is a task that even your master Freud would hardly dare undertake. But we don’t need psychoanalysis to tell us that all religions and superstitions from remotest antiquity merge in this remarkable promontory.”
Professor Bassermann pointed to the left, his firm stumpy fingers revealing his grasp on reality. “There lies the plain of Troy, where the wrath of Achilles shook the tents of the Greeks. This soil has drunk the blood of Patroclus and the tears of Priam. These clouds have beheld the face of Helen. And here,” pointing to the right, “Mount Olympus rises defiantly into the air.”
“How wonderful!” the younger man exclaimed. “If we stray through the orchard, we may come unawares upon some god in exile. Perhaps the pagan gods profess Christianity. Perhaps they dwell in one of the twenty monasteries, bending knee in the daytime to the ritual of the Greek Church. But at night, when no one can spy upon them, they throw the monk’s gown from their lovely bodies and celebrate again the Eleusinian mysteries.”
“What a pretty fancy! You should be a poet, not a neurologist. We have by no means exhausted the history of this unique place. Down below, there are still traces of a ship canal built by Xerxes. To the Greeks this promontory was known as Acte.”
“And over there?”
Aubrey pointed to a high mountain grown with tall, somber trees.
Both were too much engrossed in their conversation to notice the approach of Father Ambrose. They were startled when a deep melodious voice, giving to the English something of the honied inflexion of Homer’s heroes, replied: “That is the mountain where Christ was tempted.”
Father Ambrose crossed himself in the Greek fashion from right to left as he uttered the holy name. A few white locks saved from the shears crowned his fine head with an aureole of silver.
Professor Bassermann eyed the old monk curiously,
making some mental notes for his next book on the psychology of faith. His own immense head loomed like a dome consecrated to some skeptical deity. His eyes probed, but not unkindly, men’s brains like the little lanterns with which a surgeon illuminates the cavities of the body. Hair, once blond, still struggled to exist. Mental concentration had devastated his scalp as the tonsure had robbed Father Ambrose.
Almost boyish in contrast with his two companions, Aubrey Lowell, lithe-limbed, keen, reluctant locks brushed back, still stared at the legendary mountain top where Jesus wrestled with himself. Over his blue eyes, penetrant, analytical though they were, spread the mist of a dream.
“By the way, Father Ambrose,” Professor Bassermann questioned, “what is your version of the story of the seven plovers? What is it that they foretell?”
Father Ambrose did not answer. In spite of the balmy weather, he drew his garments closer to his body. He shuddered and made the sign of the cross.
In a trice, without warning, the face of nature grew sullen. Black, angry mouths, the clouds swallowed up the sun. The air was dense with suppressed excitement. The wind howled through the long corridors and sobbed and whispered in the secret recesses of the cells. The chime of the Vesper bell flowed out into the infinite. The silver notes of the holy chant wrestled with the storm like ministering angels with Satan. At last the imps of Storm lay vanquished. The hurricane paused in its course to do reverence to God.
Suddenly, however, a terrific clap of thunder smote the sky. The holy chime of the bell broke off with a shrill dissonance. Demons seemed to people the belfry. Rain came down like a cataract. Flashes of lightning chased one another like battling fiery dragons. The bells jangled hideously out of tune. Unearthly noises, like a satanic parody of the holy sound that marks the elevation of the host, alarmed the ears of the horrified monks. It was as if a High Priest had suddenly gone mad in the midst of a sacred ceremony and interspersed the Lord’s Prayer with unspeakable blasphemies.
Trembling but resolute, Father Ambrose seized a crucifix. In phalanx, as if for battle, the brethren followed him. Solemn, with gleaming eyes and trembling nostrils, the militant army of God swept up steep stairs mumbling the ritual of the Exorcism. Infected somewhat by the general hysteria, Aubrey followed. Professor Bassermann alone measured the situation with critical calm.
In the steeple the army paused. Father Ambrose stepped forward. “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost!” The monks crossed themselves. “If the spirits of the damned have entered, I bid them depart into the air whence they have come. He that has bound the Devil, shall He not vanquish his breed?”
Another thunder-clap. The bell resounded hoarsely like laughter from beyond the tomb.
“Courage, brethren!” the monk cried, seizing a candle with one hand and holding the cross like a sword with the other. The others followed behind him. In the flickering light, shadows swayed to and fro. From every corner of the attic, a demon seemed to grin. The darkness was haunted by a thousand malevolent voices. Aubrey’s teeth chattered. His heart galloped against his ribs.
Again Father Ambrose raised his voice:
“In the thrice blessed name of Jesus Christ our Lord, I bid thee get hence, Satan! But if thou art the soul of a sinner roaming the earth without rest, know thou that there is peace for thee also in the infinite mercy of God and of his Mother the Blessed Virgin. But whoever thou art, depart and return not to vex pious souls!”
The Holy Prior continued to challenge the Evil One, and the holy fathers chanted the ancient hymns of the Church. The infernal artillery in the skies surrendered at last. The hoarse laughter in the belfry died in a sob.
The sun aureoled the sky once more. But the ancient bell of Saint Athanasius that had tolled the glory of Heaven for a thousand years was cracked. Never again would its voice resound in praise of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.
In the blinding glare of the lightning and the final crash of the thunder-clap, unnoticed by anyone, a stranger had entered the monastery.
II: MR. ISAAC LAQUEDEM
TOWARD six o’clock the evening repast was served in a large rectangular hall. The stained glass of the large windows, wrought by monkish craftsmen, glorified the martyrs of the church. The table, made of precious oriental wood, was carved with the scene of the Last Supper. In the corners of the room images from the book of the Apocalypse grinned and stared ferociously at the diners. The walls were overdecorated in the manner of the later Greek artists, save one, at the head of the table. Upon it hung in severe simplicity, an immense black cross with the image of the Crucified, ghastly in its unredeemed whiteness. Every line of the body and of the head articulated nobility and sorrow.
Preceded by Father Ambrose, sixty monks filed into the hall, taking their accustomed seats at the table. Their step was light, their voices pitched to joy. The excitement of the afternoon was followed by the inevitable reaction. They were glad to be alive, glad to have thwarted the Evil One in the belfry.
Professor Bassermann and Aubrey Lowell occupied the seats of honor at the side of Father Ambrose. The former, calm, critical, undisturbed by the occurrences of the day, made additional mental memoranda for a new essay on religious hysteria, to be inscribed upon the cylinders of his dictograph which accompanied him on his journeys. Aubrey’s nerves, however, were still atingle. Father Ambrose had informed him of a new arrival, a traveler from afar, who had also sought refuge in the monastery from the uncertainties of the World War, bringing excellent credentials from the prime ministers of several Balkan states and from Russia.
The newcomer was expected for the evening meal. He did not appear, however, until after the first course had been served.
Aubrey raised a goblet of precious Byzantine glass inlaid with gold, but his arm became paralyzed in mid air. He gazed aghast at the crucifix. Blood, redder than his wine, streamed from the five wounds of the Crucified! He looked at the monks. He expected to hear an outburst of wailing and chanting and a rush to the altar, but neither Father Ambrose nor any of the brethren noticed the miracle. Their attention was engrossed in the sacrament of eating the delicate viands that were spread before them in the glittering plates of ancient design.
Aubrey touched nervously Professor Bassermann’s elbow. The Professor followed the direction of his friend’s eyes, but before he had adjusted his extraordinarily thick, heavy-rimmed spectacles, the blood had ceased to flow. The limbs of the Crucified gleamed white and ghastly as before.
Aubrey explained in a few words what he had seen. The Professor shook his head disapprovingly. He was not, however, totally disinterested. Aubrey’s delusion—for he could not conceive it as anything else—presented a problem that arrested his mind for the moment. At the same time, he was disgruntled because he knew by unpleasant experience that mental exertion at meals interfered with metabolism. He looked around. His eyes fell upon the window behind him. The last rays of the setting sun, like long red , needles, bent in the vain endeavor to pierce the pane.
“My dear friend, the sun is a sadist in his playful moods. His rays reopened the wounds of the Crucified!”
“So you think it was merely an optical illusion?” Aubrey exclaimed. “How fortunate that you were not a guest at the wedding feast of Canaan. One word from you would have changed the wine back into water!”
“I agree with you,” the Professor replied. “An experienced hypnotist is not easily amenable to suggestion. Had I been one of the disciples, I should have seriously handicapped Christianity.”
“But you were one of the disciples,” said a pleasant voice, with just a touch of mockery, “and your name was Saint Thomas.”
A tall young man, evidently a gentleman of leisure, with black hair neatly parted and large melancholy eyes, seated himself at the table.
“Mr. Laquedem,” Father Ambrose introduced the stranger to his American guests.
“Pardon me,” the newcomer remarked, “I could not help overhearing part of your conversation. You remind me of two figures in
a painting of the Last Supper by a celebrated Russian. You, Professor, resemble his conception of Saint Thomas, whereas your friend suggests John the favorite disciple.”
Suddenly, the oldest of the monks placed his hand upon his heart and screamed as if someone had stabbed him. His companions splashed wine over his face, rubbed his temples, fanned him. It was not easy to revive him. “It seemed,” he whispered, “that I saw our Saviour nailed to the Cross a second time.”
When quiet was restored, Aubrey and Bassermann studied the newcomer. Mr. Laquedem was a man of uncertain age. At the first glance, one would have taken him for thirty, but on closer scrutiny, one discovered lines incompatible with youth. The name was Semitic, but there was little of the Hebrew in his caste of countenance. Certain traces suggested the Spaniard; others, so Professor Bassermann insinuated, the Russian. His quick nervous movements, his voice when raised by excitement, little mannerisms almost too trifling to be noticed, seemed more Oriental than European. In certain moments, in certain moods, he was positively Assyrian. The secrets of Egypt seemed to slumber in his long lashes. His eyes changing color with his moods, were baffling. Now they flashed like the glint of a sword, now softening, they seemed to swim with tears like eyes of one who had seen the fall of Jerusalem.
“What is your country?” Professor Bassermann asked.
“You speak English like a native,” interjected Aubrey.
“I am something of a linguist,” the other smiled.
“You are a Russian, are you not?” Bassermann again insisted.
“Call me—a Cosmopolitan.”
Isaac Laquedem toyed with the conversation. He tossed it like a ball into the air and caught it again unexpectedly with the skill of a juggler. He displayed a marvelous knowledge of out-of-the-way subjects. He spoke with such confidence of obscure authors and half forgotten periods of history that Aubrey, who listened fascinated, suspected him of being an imaginative and delightful liar rather than an erudite.
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