Doña Cristina pressed Kotikokura’s hand and whispered into his ear, “My bear…tonight, you are mine.”
Kotikokura blushed.
LII: OUT OF THE WINDOW OF THE PAST—KOTIKOKURA, THE LION—THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF DON JUAN—I VISIT DON JUAN’S HOUSE—I DISCUSS LOVE WITH DON JUAN—DON JUAN’S SECRET—I KILL DON JUAN
IT was nearly noon.
I opened the shutter, and looked out. At a distance, the Guadalquivir glistened like a long silver stripe on an officer’s coat. Still further, the hills rounded at the top as if a hand had smoothed them. The whiteness of the houses no longer annoyed me. It served as a fine background for the trees which cast long gray shadows, trembling a little. The chimes of the Mezquita, whose belfry towered about the city—rang slowly, lazily, inviting not so much to prayer as to slumber.
A driver urged a team of oxen, swearing by all the saints that if they would not hasten, he would deliver them into the hands of the butchers.
Two nuns made tiny steps, counting the while their rosaries. An officer on horseback rode proudly on, as if to an imaginary conquest.
I remembered myself dressed as a Roman captain. Lydia seemed to pass underneath my window, her silken toga ruffled somewhat by the wind.—Nero fiddled.—Poppaea smiled her lascivious, cruel smile.—Charlemagne grasped his leg in sudden pain.—The Armenian Bishop—Africa. The desert, the sand that rose like billows of the sea.—Salome, the gorgeous, the incomparable Salome. Had I possessed her in truth? Was it a dream? Was not everything a dream?
The chimes continued to ring.
Who was I? Where was I? I rubbed my eyes vigorously, and laughed. I was in the anteroom of Doña Cristina’s Palace of Love,—the purest in Córdoba which even Don Juan, the incomparable lover, frequented. Don Juan—he was still with his virgin from the country—and Kotikokura, the bear, the lion, had not yet unclasped the arms of his love.
Poor Fernando—a fine face, almost feminine.—He would die within twenty-four hours. It was a pity. But why not? A day, a year, a century—what matter?
And Don Juan—equally skillful as a duelist and as a lover. What did he seek? Was he a voluptuary or a philosopher? Did he find in women only a momentary spasmodic joy, or had he discovered some ultimate secret of sensual pleasure? Why the pride in the numbers? What secret motive animated his restlessness? What was the meaning of the affectionate look when he quarreled with the lad in the brothel? Why the regret? Why the inordinate fury?
He had mentioned the name of a Jewish girl—a rabbi’s daughter—with his last cup. Ah, if he could possess her! But in the same breath, he cursed the whole race, would gladly have put them all to the sword.
He must not get her! Don Juan shall be frustrated by a Jewess! Something in me revolted at the idea that a woman of my race should be the toy of this man. Was my mother speaking through me? Was it something even more remote? Woman is a symbol, the foundation of her race. While she remains pure, the race continues. Why this partiality to the Jews? The fate of other races did not concern me. Was it because as long as the Jew lived, Jesus was still defeated? He might persuade the whole world, but not those who knew him. We were the thorn in his side…
Did I unwittingly love the rabbi’s daughter whom I had not even met? A tenderness towards this unknown young person overwhelmed me. I had wandered long, I would return to my flock. It was always a woman who stretched her arms to welcome the prodigal…
Kotikokura entered quietly, and stood in back of me. I made believe I was not aware of his presence. He coughed a little and shuffled his feet. I turned. His head was bent, and he looked embarrassed.
“Well, my bear, my lion,—why the sheepish look?”
He pressed my hand to his lips.
“Has the lady bitten off—your nose, Kotikokura?”
He made a gesture of disgust. “Woman!”
I laughed.
He repeated, “Woman.”
“Woman, Kotikokura, is an attitude. She is either the loveliest thing in the world—or the unloveliest. It all depends upon what you seek in her, and how much you are willing to forgive in advance.”
He repeated, “Woman.”
“How about Salome, Kotikokura?”
“Salome—woman!” he exclaimed.
“You are an old hag! I shall never cross your threshold again!” Don Juan shouted from the next room.
“But señor, is it my fault? How could I tell?” Doña Cristina whimpered.
“Why don’t you instruct your women more adroitly?”
“She says she tried her very best, señor, but you were not in the mood to be pleased…”
The door opened brusquely. Don Juan came out. Doña Cristina, bent in two, her arms outstretched, followed him.
“Señor, señor!”
He threw her a purse. “Take it—and do not let me see your face again.”
“What is money to me if– —”
Don Juan placed his hand upon the hilt of his sword. “Go away—or I shall run you through like a sow.”
She snatched the purse and rushed out. Around her neck I noticed two fingermarks, which I recognized as Kotikokura’s.
“The stupid calf!” Don Juan exclaimed, walking up and down the room. His eyes were swollen a little from lack of sleep, and his face was drawn. He looked his age.
“Why do men rave about virgins, señor? They are awkward and clumsy and afford no satisfaction. Nobody wants wine which has been unfermented. Why do they insist upon virginity? The hen will cackle about it too. Don Juan was not in the mood! Is it for a man to be in the mood or for a woman to create it? Only boors are really hungry. A gentleman’s appetite is stirred by an apéritif. Not in the mood! Had she had an ounce of brain or training, or lacking these, an instinctive flair– —”
I remembered my experience with Poppaea. Had Don Juan failed to be—Don Juan?
“Perhaps, señor,” I suggested, “you were distracted by something or other?”
“Perhaps. The fool Fernando came into my mind again and again, I do not wish to kill him. Why did he act like an idiot?”
“Is it really so important if he continues to live or not?”
He looked at me. “No! To the devil with him!” he shouted.
He walked up and down, his hands upon his back.
“And that Jewess has disturbed my thoughts. She is a virgin too—like all young Jewesses. But she cannot be so stupid! Besides, she is beautiful. How can such an abominable race produce such an exquisite creature, señor?”
“The roots of roses are set deeply in the mud.”
“That is true, señor. She is a rose. Her roots are in the—Ghetto.”
Kotikokura opened and shut his fists, grumbling: “Woman” from time to time.
“She is protected like a king’s treasure. My very name is sufficient to alarm all Jews.”
Don Juan resumed his walking. His shoes glittered like golden mirrors every time he broke the reflection of the sun, while his temples shone like thinly hidden ivory.
“Are the women of your country, señor, also mainly foxes and geese?”
“I have traveled in many lands, Don Juan, and have known women of all races and of all colors. Everywhere man complains against them. Woman has been compared to all creatures, wild or tamed, and still has not been explained.”
He looked at me, placing his hand upon his hip and closing a little his eyes. “Señor, from the first glance, I recognized in you a kindred soul.”
I bowed.
“You seek, evidently, as I do, the ultimate– —”
“Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, Don Juan.”
“Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged,” he repeated. “That is it! This is what I have been seeking. To know what one seeks is as difficult at times as to find it. Señor, you have the lasting gratitude of Don Juan. I swear it by the sword and the cross!” He touched both.
He muttered to himself, “Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged! But señor, I forget the seconds of Don Ferna
ndo must be waiting for me at my home. May I ask you to be my guest?” Looking up at Kotikokura, “My guests, gentlemen, for the rest of your sojourn in Córdoba.”
We bowed. I thanked him.
“The air here is stifling, putrid.” He screwed up his nose. He reminded me at that moment of an oversensitive and fastidious young woman.
Don Juan’s mansion was a neo-Moorish building, situated upon the bank of the Guadalquivir. A rectangular garden in which the flowers and trees were arranged with mathematical precision surrounded it on all sides, so that only the upper part of the house was visible when approached.
“I hate irregularity and disorder,” he told me. “I prefer to dominate nature and arrange the colors and sizes of my flowers in a harmony which pleases my eye. But I suppose this is due to my masculine temperament. I am logical in all things.”
This regularity, on the contrary, struck me as profoundly feminine. It seemed to me more like the fussiness of an old maid. Two male servants helped us with our clothing. A third one prepared food.
“Even my servants are men. I cannot endure the whimsicality of women in my domestic environment.”
The walls were covered with swords, weapons, heads of wild boars and other mementoes of Don Juan’s masculine prowess. Two small parrots screeched “Bienvenido,” ceaselessly. Several tiny birds in cages flapped their wings, warbling and whistling.
Don Juan invited me to sit at the table. Kotikokura, a large jug of wine between his knees, seated himself in front of the fireplace.
“A friend of mine,” remarked Don Juan, “a young poet, has expressed my life in a poem. This poem shall be my epitaph.
“At the flutter of my wings
The breezes quivered,
And a thousand flowers unclasped
Their honeyed treasures.
Alas! I died of sheer despair
And lonesomeness
In the golden chalice of a rose.”
“And a thousand women were unable to dispel your gloom, Don Juan?”
“Only while their embraces lasted, and frequently not as long. A thousand women… What does it mean, señor? One obliterates the memory of the other, leaving us empty-handed. A man always says: ‘This one is different. This one’s lips will burn the flesh and touch the soul.’—But they hardly scorch the skin.”
“Woman is an attitude,” I replied, repeating my remark to Kotikokura. “It all depends upon what one seeks in her and how much one is willing to forgive in advance.”
Don Juan drank another cup. His face flushed. “I do not know what I seek in her, my friend. Love is only a method to vanquish boredom…”
“Our lives are so short, Don Juan! Have we time to be bored?”
Kotikokura grinned.
“The gods have mocked us with an unspeakable mockery, señor,” Don Juan replied, “by making the temple of Eros an accessory of the cloaca. Only drink and the caress of a thousand women can make us forget the disgust and the indignity.”
“Should not a great lover, Don Juan, overcome this fastidiousness—defeat the gods and their mockery, and discover beauty precisely where they had meant to create ugliness?”
He knit his brows and looked at me intently. “What man can do that?”
“I have done it, Don Juan.”
He smiled a little bitterly, a little ironically. “Señor, if you have done that, then you are the Supreme Lover of all time—and not Don Juan!”
I smiled. ‘How often we speak the truth unwittingly.’ I thought. Was I more fortunate than Don Juan merely because I lived longer? Had Nature afforded me such an abundance of life, such torrents of vitality, that all the dikes of ugliness were swept away, and the fresh waters of beauty flooded my being?
“Perhaps,” I said, “if our lives were stretched out for centuries, Don Juan, we might discover the secret of outwitting the irony of the gods.”
“What an incalculable boredom would overwhelm us then, señor! We might have to possess a million women—and still remain unassuaged.”
A servant whispered into Don Juan’s ear that the seconds had arrived.
The seconds brought word that any attempt to effect a reconciliation would be futile. Fernando refused to apologize. After they were gone, Don Juan waved his fist. “The idiot! The idiot! He wants to die! He has seen me engaged in many duels. I never received a scar, señor,—never! He has never fought except in play. He was always so gentle and amenable—more delicate than his sister! What mania women have for confessing! Had she kept still about it, her brother would not be dead tomorrow! Ah, let us drink, señor… The world’s a cackling hen.”
We drank one another’s health. With every additional cup, Don Juan became more melancholy. I had long ago observed that drink brings forth our true personality which, like a too passionate virgin, is locked within the castle of our beings. Drink is a daring Knight Errant who climbs the tall wall and descends a rope, carrying in his arms our secret.
Don Juan was a gentle lamb, bleating sadly—not a roaring lion of love.
Don Juan sighed. “I do not know why I tell you all this, señor,” he said. “It is but the second day I have seen you. Never before have I spoken so freely– —”
“I appreciate your confidence, señor.”
The servant whispered something into Don Juan’s ear.
“No, no—not today.”
The servant seemed reluctant to go.
“Not today,” Don Juan shouted. “To the devil with her!”
The servant left.
“The amiable Countess expects me.”
He laughed suddenly. “I poisoned two dogs, bribed a half dozen servants, and nearly broke my neck climbing into her room. Besides, her husband is a favorite of the King. I jeopardized my head to go with her through the absurd motions of conjugation. Why did I risk so much? Señor, she has a beauty spot on her left breast… A tiny spot the size of a pinhead. It is really a blemish, an imperfection of the skin,—yet it promised so much!… I assure you, señor, she was not one bit different from all the others. I should have known!… She was my nine hundred and ninety-seventh.”
“Pardon me, Don Juan, but is it really possible to keep an exact record of every amour?”
He laughed. “I have an album, señor, in which I put the initials and the number of each woman with a few remarks, generally of a depreciating nature—too fat, too thin, too white, too dark, too insistent, too cold, bored me at the critical moment, reminded me of a parrot, a dog, a cat. Also the difficulties encountered—the duels fought, the husbands duped, etc., etc.”
“A strange document which will be of value to posterity,” I remarked.
Don Juan smiled, pleased.
“Many a poet will compose sonnets to the world’s master lover…”
“But señor,—I have never loved.”
“What!” I exclaimed.
“Love…love…what is love?”
“Not even the first woman who unlocked for you the sweet gateway of love…?”
He shook his head. “Not even the first.”
He seemed like a child with countless toys, enjoying none, stamping upon them, casting them aside, bored and irritated.
I too had experimented with many passions. I, too, had experienced the chill of a frozen kiss. But in spite of it, were there not Mary and Salome and Ulrica and Lydia and Damis and John? I had loved them! They had touched, in one way or another, my soul, leaving upon my memory the imprint of their exquisite loveliness. I had loved! I had not lived in vain! Why had Don Juan never loved?
Kotikokura, his eyes heavy, grinned constantly like a statue of mockery.
“Señor, my friend,” Don Juan said suddenly, “you have mentioned unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. The phrase sticks in my brain like an arrow.”
“Yes,” I said vaguely.
“What does it mean? Is it acquired by one of the drugs that the Crusaders have brought from the East, or the Moors from China? I have experimented with all. I have applied them externall
y; leeches have injected them into my blood; I emptied deep phials. The poppy whose sap I consumed never made me experience unendurable pleasure, or if it seemed unendurable, it was never indefinitely prolonged.”
“It is not the poppy, not a drug, señor. Drugs, like apothecary’s scales, weigh minutely their pleasures, demanding in return either an equal amount of pain or a diminution of capacity.”
“Not a drug?” He placed his elbows upon the table and looked at me closely. I remained silent.
“Señor, I swear by the cross that if it is a secret, I shall keep it until I am dust within the dust. Don Juan never breaks his promise—to a man.”
“Don Juan, unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged is possible only for him who loves—woman.”
He stared at me.
“It is neither a drug nor an incantation, but a long and profound study, a gradual training, until the senses perceive with the clarity of an eye, a third eye, an eye that pierces like a sharp tool. It transmutes the body into a conflagration… It turns the vulgar metal to gold…”
Don Juan, his lips parted and brows knit, listened. “Such knowledge, however, Don Juan, is only for the elect, for those who truly love—woman.”
“Señor,” he said, slightly irritably, “this is the second time you have mentioned the fact that one must love woman. I do not understand.”
“Don Juan, is it the truth you seek or polite conversation?”
After a pause, he said a little hoarsely, “From you—the truth.”
“The truth, Don Juan, as it appears to me. Naturally, I may be wrong.”
He nodded.
“Don Juan, you do not love woman.”
“I have told you that myself.”
“You said it without realizing the significance of your confession.”
“What is the significance of my words?”
“You do not love woman, or else you would not pursue her with such vehemence—and bravado. Each new conquest is proclaimed to the world. Don Juan has captured one more! Everybody smiles, admires, and envies. If you loved woman, you would concentrate, would rejoice in the pleasure afforded by one, not in the conquest of many. Your multiple amours are merely an attempt to seek refuge from your own disgust…”
My First Two Thousand Years; the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew Page 27