My First Two Thousand Years; the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew

by George Sylvester Viereck

  People of a dozen religions lived if not lovingly together,—something which could hardly be expected—at least without murdering one another.

  Nevertheless, being a foreigner and therefore naturally suspected—for man has this in common with the dog that strangeness intimidates and enrages him—I preferred not to ask freely for the whereabouts of a philosopher once excommunicated by his own people and generally considered, if not an atheist, at least a vague and indifferent believer.

  From an old bookseller, I discovered that Benedictus Spinoza, finding Amsterdam unsuitable to his health, had for some time now been living at The Hague, if indeed he was still living.

  “We must not linger too long, Kotikokura. Our sage seems to be of a very delicate constitution. It would be a pity to reach him after his departure from this troubled, superstition-devoured earth.”

  At The Hague, a lens polisher informed me that the renegade lived on the outskirts of the city, taking greater care of his lungs than of his lenses.

  An old woman, clean as if she too had been whitewashed and scrubbed like the houses, scrutinized me for a long minute.

  “The master is in his room,” she said, pointing to the attic. “He has been writing for the last two days steadily. He should not do it. He is not feeling very well.”

  “It is true, then,” I said, “that his lungs are not strong.”

  She sighed. “It is, sir. And it is a pity. He is the best man in the world, whatever the others may say. He has lived with us for two years and never have I heard an unkindly word. And as for religion, whenever I beg him to come along to church, he accompanies us. He does not blaspheme or mock. It is not true, sir. He– —”

  The stairs creaked.

  “He is coming down, sir.”

  Spinoza appeared,—a middle-aged man, his face drawn, his eyes large and brilliant as if they had just looked at a newly-discovered star.

  “Master,” the old woman said quietly, “are you feeling well?”

  He smiled, coughed drily, and answered, “I am feeling well… Thank you, little mother.”

  “You are working too hard. It is not right,” she admonished. “Young people never understand that—”

  He placed his hand, long and thin and nearly transparent, upon her shoulder. “Am I young?”

  “Of course. But here I am chattering while this gentleman is waiting to see you, master.”

  She walked out of the room. Spinoza gave me his hand.

  “Master, I come from the end of the earth to see you.”

  He smiled. His finely shaped lips curled a little. His eyes closed half-way. “I do not deserve this honor, sir, I am certain.”

  “To see a man free from the superstitions that ravage the world is worth a trip from the moon.”

  Spinoza played with one of the long black curls that fell over his cheek. “Experience has taught me that all the usual surroundings of social life are vain and futile, seeing that none of the objects of my fears contained in themselves anything either good or bad, except in so far as the mind is affected by them.” He coughed. “But forgive me. I have just quoted a passage from my work. It may be totally irrelevant.”

  “On the contrary, master. It is quite relevant and like a precious jewel, has many facets.”

  “I wonder, my friend,” he said gently, “if you would care to walk with me along the shore? I love the sea. We come from the sea and shall eventually return to the sea. She is the Mother.”

  We walked silently, leaving imprints upon the sand which the low tide endeavored, but in vain, to reach and fill. Spinoza stopped from time to time to breathe deeply or cough, bending upon his cane. His face was smooth and the two red spots upon his cheeks, the symbol of the fire that consumed his lungs, gave him a youthful appearance. His broad forehead, however, cut by three profound wrinkles, running almost parallel, refuted his youth and if judged by itself gave the impression of great age. His nose, long and sensitive, was Greek rather than Jewish, and his smooth chin, in contrast with the rest of the face, showed that determination essential to one who would remain unperturbed amid the malignity of the people about him.

  “Master, have you read of Apollonius?”

  “Only here and there. He was one of the few who understood God.”

  “God?” I asked, a little ironically. “I thought there were gods but no God.”

  He looked at me sadly and nodded. “The many gods do not refute God, my friend.”

  “I am older than I seem, master,” I said, “and I have traveled the world over but I have never discovered God.”

  “It is not necessary to live very long nor is it essential to travel the world over to discover God. God is everywhere and eternal. Neither time nor space bind Him and the foolishness of the people does not destroy Him. The world is one, and all things in it are parts of one self-evident, self-producing order, one nature which is the Substance, which is God. In it are we all; it makes us what we are; it does what its own nature determines; it explains itself and all of us. It is uncreated, supreme, omnipresent, unchangeable, the law of laws, the nature of natures.”

  He coughed.

  ‘Apollonius,’ I whispered.

  “The Substance is eternal, bearing no relation to time. No temporal view of time can exhaust its nature. All things, even those that happened a million years ago are eternally present. There is no before and no after.”

  “Is God, an inanimate force or a living intelligence, master?”

  He stopped, planted his cane in front of him, and answered: “God must have infinite ways of expressing Himself,—each perfect, self-determined. We know but two—body and mind, equally real, equally true,—constituting as far as we can judge, the whole Substance. From the faintest line to our own bodies, every visible or tangible thing is an expression of the extended or corporeal aspect of God. In the same manner, our minds are but the extended or mental aspect of God. Mind-body—two parallel lines and both the expression of divinity. God is therefore both the animate and inanimate, the living and the dead,—everything that is or ever was or ever can be.”

  He straightened up and looked into the distance as if all space had been eliminated and infinitely stretched out before his enraptured gaze.

  I could make no remark, ask no questions. His words thrilled me as if the sea in front of us had suddenly changed into a majestic orchestral composition; as if the sky had burst into a luminous white light.

  ‘Apollonius,’ I thought, ‘Apollonius come to life again. There is no past and no future.’

  “Jesus,” he said softly, “claimed to be the Son of God, and so He was, and so was Mohammed and Moses, and so is everyone, every man, every creature, however humble, however powerful, each partaking of the divinity to the extent of his ability and nature. God is everywhere, always. We are not only His sons, we are He. Our finiteness is lost within His infinity, even as the thin stream that trickles down a mountain into a rivulet which flows into the large river, which in turn mingles and becomes the salty depths of this sea.”

  We resumed our walk. For a long time, neither of us spoke. Apollonius, his long beard shivering in the breeze, accompanied us, and enveloped us with his white silken robe. ‘Whenever you desire me intensely, I shall be with you.’ He was with me. Life was eternal. There was no death. Jesus, too, was not far off, walking over the waters, perhaps, as his disciples claimed. He had returned but not to destroy me. He was the Son of God, even as all men, even as the birds that flew above our heads.

  Spinoza coughed and closed his eyes.

  “Master, were it not wiser to return home? The air is very strong here.”

  He looked at me and smiled, placing his hand upon my shoulder.

  “We must die sooner or later. The fool alone fears that which is inevitable. The wise man looks upon death as a soft cool bed wherein he may rest after the fever of the day.”

  “Is it not a pity that man’s life must be so short that he hardly has time to learn how to walk unscathed among the thorns th
at surround him?”

  “Life—death—are synonymous and interchangeable terms. The sun which is setting now in front of us and will soon disappear—does it die because it is no longer visible?”

  “Is it possible, master, for a man to live for centuries?”

  “Why not? He would partake of the body of God in a greater measure than the rest of humanity.”

  “Would you consider endless life a blessing or a curse?”

  “I would consider it useless, but not a curse. God inflicts no penalties. The true mind knows nothing of the bondage of time, thinks of no before and no after, has no future, dreads nothing, laments nothing; but enjoys its own endlessness, its own completeness, has all things in all things.”

  “Then, Master, the Wandering Jew may not be a myth.”

  “The Wandering Jew is truth whether considered as a living entity or a personification of his race. He is the symbol of restlessness and search. Some day, he will find what he seeks, and will no longer wander.”

  “What does he seek?”

  “God. Everyone, everything seeks God as every drop of rain seeks and, ultimately finds, the sea.”

  I pressed his hand. “It is true!”

  “The wise man, my friend loves God with a fragment of that very love wherewith God loves Himself and his meditation is not of death but of life, of the Eternal Life whereof he is a part and has ever been and ever will be a part. He is bound as a nut in a shell, but he is the monarch of infinite space. The nightmare of his phantom life has ceased to trouble him.”

  The air became chilly. Spinoza wrapped himself tightly in his black cotton robe.

  We turned our steps homeward. He quoted parts of his Ethics and explained them by mathematical formulæ. Never since Ali Hasan did mathematics contain so much beauty and wisdom. I did not dare interrupt the flow of his words lest the cup slip from the hand and the precious draft spill upon the sand.

  We reached his door. He looked at me for a long time.

  “If the way to God seems exceedingly hard, it can nevertheless be reached. All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”

  “Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “you are weary today. May I come in a day or two again and listen to your words once more?”

  He sighed. “Yes, certainly.”

  He pressed my hand and entered the house.

  I did not wish to be importunate, and let a few days pass before I visited Spinoza again.

  “Come, Kotikokura, this time you will accompany me. You, too, must hear the master’s words, limpid as the waters that tumble from a mountain.”

  He combed his hair and arranged his cloak. “True, in his presence, we must be annointed and beautiful. He holds communion with God. We are his priests.”

  We walked slowly, rhythmically. The sun had passed the meridian and like a vase over-brimming, bent a little, to pour his libation upon the earth, the cupped hands of the universe.

  A calm and delicious joy possessed me.

  “Kotikokura, we no longer wander strangers in an inimical country. We are the children of God—God Himself.”

  “Ca-ta-pha god.”

  “Yes, he is god. Kotikokura god also. The sun is god. This butterfly that perches upon the window sill, mistaking it for a meadow, is god. The air we breathe, the water we drink—everything! Life is a perpetual eucharist! Ah, Kotikokura, the curtain of night has been lifted, and the truth is beautiful.”

  Kotikokura’s eyes closed half-way, voluptuously.

  “I sought logic but found instead irrationality. I sought beauty but found ugliness. I sought life and discovered death. The master, in his few years of existence, without hurry, without despair, sought what every man should seek—God—and found Him infinitely more beautiful than any priest or saint had ever imagined Him. People speak glibly of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, but think of Him as dying upon the cross, as shouting through bushes, as riding upon a camel, as howling across the thunder. Spinoza, out of his own magnificent brain, discovered the true nature of God—timeless, spaceless, all-inclusive. No one is a stranger, no one is homeless. The gates have been thrown wide open, all are welcome, all are within the limitless castle. No Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, no angry judge, no sycophantic angels, no merciless devils. We are all one. An infinite circle embraces us like the white perfumed arms of a new love.”

  Kotikokura raised his arms ecstatically to the sun.

  “This God requires neither prayer nor bribing. No hosannahs must be sung to His Holy Name. The knees need not bend before Him, or His mercy be invoked. He is not merely a human king a thousandfold enlarged. He is that which is. He is ourselves. He is Ca-ta-pha. He is Kotikokura.”

  Kotikokura grasped my arm. We quickened our pace. Our hearts beat like triumphant drums.

  On the threshold of Spinoza’s home, the old woman sat, knitting slowly. She was not aware of our arrival. Kotikokura scraped his foot. She looked up. I greeted her. She answered vaguely.

  “The Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “is he in his room? May I see him?”

  “The Master,” she answered, “is dead.”

  The universe, so beautiful, so vast, so perfect a few minutes previously, shrank to the size of a coffin and God assumed the shape of a worm.

  “He was buried yesterday,” and lowering her head, she proceeded to knit, tears trickling upon her hands.

  I remained standing, silent for a long while. Then I seated myself next to her.

  “The Master called you Little Mother. He loved you.”

  She looked at me, her face wrinkled as if a nervous hand had crumpled it.

  “I loved him too. He was the gentlest man that ever lived. He did not know the meaning of hate. Even the spiders in his room he would not kill.” She wiped her heavily-rimmed spectacles, wet from tears. “He made these, the Master, and I can see through them as if I still had the eyes of my youth.”

  “What has become of the Master’s papers?”

  “They are locked in the drawer of his table. His printer will take care of them. So the Master ordered.”

  “Did he suffer much before he died?”

  “It was during the night that he began to feel ill. I went up.

  He smiled and motioned me to approach. ‘Master, shall I bring the priest?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is not necessary. God knows everything.’ I began to weep. ‘Foolish Little Mother.’ he said. ‘Why do you weep? Must not everyone die?’ ‘You are too young, Master.’ ‘There is no time, no past, no future. There is neither death nor life.’ I did not understand him. I am not learned. I am an ignorant woman. I see life and I see death, but I felt what he meant. It was his great goodness that made him say what he said. ‘Sit here near me,’ he said, ‘and knit, Little Mother.’ The whole night I sat up. Towards morning, I fell asleep. When I awoke, he was dead. The doctor came but it was too late.”

  “For the Master’s sake, I wish you would do me a favor, Little Mother.”

  “What favor can a poor old woman like me do?”

  “I want you to take this purse that your last days may not weigh too heavily upon you.”

  I placed the purse in her lap.

  “No, no, sir. I cannot accept it.”

  “For his sake, Little Mother.”

  “But I have done nothing to deserve this money.”

  “You have indeed. You have been good to the wisest and best of men while others misunderstood and maligned him.”

  “No, sir. I cannot– —”

  “Had he had money, would he not have given it to you?”

  “Yes, he would, I am sure.”

  “This is his money. You must take it.”

  I rose. She was about to rise also. I pressed her down gently.

  “I beg of you, Little Mother.”

  She looked at me for a long minute, kissed my hand, and made the sign of the cross.

  “May Jesus repay you for this, sir.”

  “Jesus has paid me in advance. It is because of him that I had t
he good fortune of meeting the Master.”

  I took Kotikokura’s arm and we walked slowly homeward. “Jesus, Spinoza, Ca-ta-pha,—all Jews and all denied by their people! Strange race giving birth to gods whom they do not recognize, whom they crucify, stone and stab. Stranger still that Spinoza whom I only saw once should have made me realize that I no longer hate Jesus, that he is of my blood, that he is my friend! Who, indeed, should know him and love him if not Ca-ta-pha?”

  A dove, white as a handful of snow, descended from one of the houses and settled at our feet.

  “Kotikokura!” I exclaimed, “Jesus lives.”

  “He lives and Spinoza lives and Apollonius and all those who thought beautiful thoughts, whose hearts beat in harmony with the universe, with God.”

  Kotikokura raised his arms toward the sun and uttered the prayer of his tribe.

  “The sun is the Father, the Earth his beloved Daughter, conceived immaculate, by His eternal wisdom. Hail Sun, Father of us all!” I exclaimed.

  “Ca-ta-pha… Ca-ta-pha… Ca-ta-pha.” Kotikokura uttered, facing the sun.

  I communed in silence with the World Spirit. My soul was one with the universe.

  LXXVI: AT THE DOCK OF SAARDAM—THE HUMOR OF THE TSAR—KOTIKOKURA FORGETS—I BUILD A CITY—THE EMPIRE OF GOLD

  WE were standing at the dock of Saardam, watching the work of the shipbuilders.

  Suddenly, one of them, a man of gigantic proportions, waved his arm and spoke to the rest in a strange jargon, a mixture of German, Dutch and Russian, but quite comprehensible nevertheless.

  “Who of you wants to go to Russia? The Tsar will pay you ten times your wages here. He will give you full protection, will let you keep your religion, and your customs.”

  The rest looked up, some smiling, a few waving their fingers about their temples to indicate that he was raving.

  “He has been saying this since he came to work a week ago,” said one.

  “Yes, every day he says the same thing.”