Pilgermann

by Russell Hoban

  ‘What is it?’ I said.

  ‘This matter of the tiles,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing simple about it—one can so easily go about it the wrong way. At first I had in mind to make them of sun-dried mud; I wanted nothing too permanent, I wanted clay from the river bank that would endure only its little season as artifact before it returned to itself. Then there came to me a dream: I was standing on Hidden Lion near the centre of it. The pattern was complete. At the centre of it stood a little tower and at the top of the tower stood a hooded figure who pointed with his finger to the tiles. They were fired and glazed. This hooded personage said nothing but in my mind were the words: “They have lasted this long because they have passed through the fire.”’

  How strange it was to me, that rainy season through which passed the year 1096 into the year 1097. It was strange in the way in which it associated itself with a name and an image. Through the winter rains there echoed cavernously under the main street of Antioch a great rolling rush of waters in which could be heard the heavy sliding of earth and sand and gravel. This was the winter torrent that little by little was carrying Mount Silpius away into the river and the sea. Down through the cleft in Silpius ran the torrent, through the Bab el-Hadid, the Iron Gate, then under the city it rumbled through its vaulted channel to the Orontes. Onopniktes was the name of this torrent: Onopniktes, the Donkey-Drowner. When I first heard that name a thrill of recognition ran through me, there appeared in my mind the dark and echoing caverns of that churning flood in which rolled over and over dead donkeys in the wild foam. Because of its name, because of the idea of those dead donkeys rolling in the racing flood, because of the idea of the mountain rushing particle by particle under the city to the river and the sea, Onopniktes became in my mind one with the rush of history and the rising of a darkness in the name of Christ.

  While that greater Onopniktes that coursed its wild way under the cities of the world brought the Franks upon its flood to Antioch, Bembel Rudzuk carried on his business from day to day but ranged less widely than he used to, both in his shipments and in his travels; he was wealthy enough to be as busy or as unbusy as he chose, and for the present he confined his trading to the stretch of coast from Suwaydiyya south to Ghaza. Professionally well-informed by his correspondents, he noted that pirates were active more than usual; he also had news of the departures of the various armies of Christ on their way to our part of the world. Bembel Rudzuk traded mostly in silk and he found the rise and fall of the price of a standard bale a reliable index to the Mediterranean state of mind. ‘Today the market is like a firm and well-shaped pair of buttocks,’ he said, ‘but tomorrow it could be like burnt stubble. Risk is salt to the meat of commerce but I don’t like the smell of the world just now; it has the smell of disorder, it has the smell of a leaking ship in which sea water has got into the silk and the crew have opened the wineskins and are looting the cargo; it has the smell of mildew and rotting oranges.’

  Strolling in his warehouse, snuffing up the scents of commerce from the corded canvas bales, Bembel Rudzuk clinked in his hand a sealed purse of gold dinars. on, some say it was his own son, Ham,’ he said. ‘The important thing is that this Noah who built the ark, who also built the first altar, this big shipper and worshipper, he ended up like you but we don’t hear anything about his being thrown out of the congregation. I myself think that the crux of the matter is whether you start out as a eunuch or only end up as one. Did you start out complete?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘At least physically.’

  ‘Think,’ he said, buttoning me on to his hard blue eye as if I were a buttonhole, ‘think of this tradition of a castrated Noah. What do you think about it?’

  ‘I’m not yet able to take it in,’ I said. I imagined thunder and lightning, the ark rolling in heavy seas, Noah naked with blood streaming from his castration, Noah shaking his first at God. I wanted to put my hands on the Rabbi’s throat and cut off the supply of wind with which he continually made words.

  Tradition,’ he said with his red hair standing out all round his face like Saint Elmo’s fire, ‘puts things together like a good cook: a little of this and a little of that. Tradition is a balancer, a bookkeeper, an accountant. Debits and credits, yes?’

  ‘Which?’ I said.

  ‘This is why Noah, who was given so much, has something taken away,’ said the Rabbi, and folded his arms across his chest as does a man who has utterly dried up his opponent in debate.

  ‘And to what conclusion does this bring us?’ I said.

  ‘That is for you alone to know,’ said the Rabbi. ‘I cannot tell you because I don’t know what the Lord has given you in exchange for what has been taken from you.’

  I opened my mouth to speak. What could I tell him? That God was no longer He and had become It? That from Jesus himself came the seed that gave life to Jesus? Could I tell him about the tiny dead golden body of Christ in the mouth of the Lion of the World? Could I tell him of the maggot-writhing headless tax-collector and the other companions of my road? Could I tell him of Sophia?

  ‘You don’t have to say it aloud,’ said the Rabbi; ‘I don’t have to know; God already knows and if you also know then that’s enough.’

  ‘So what do you want from me?’ I said.

  ‘I want you to come to the synagogue and pray with your fellow Jews,’ he said.

  The Nagid had so far been maintaining a dignified silence as befitted someone who was not a seeker-out of others but the sought-out of many; none the less it was a bustling kind of silence. This Nagid, whom I think of as Worldly ben Worldly although he had a name that I ought to remember, was a tall, grand-looking man who seemed to embody the principle of making arangements and the idea that the ponderous wheel of time and history might not roll too crushingly on if one knew the right people. Now he made with his hands that gesture of holding a large invisible melon or model world so characteristic of top arrangers everywhere—I have often thought that the idea of the roundness of the world first came to scientific observers from seeing this gesture, so suggestive of a Platonic ideal that the existence of a physically real counterpart could not seriously be doubted—and said, ‘We Jews are scattered over the face of the earth; let us at least be united in those places to which we have been scattered.’

  Both the Nagid and the Rabbi, being classified as dhimmis, beneficiaries of Muslim hospitality, wore yellow turbans and belts and were not allowed to ride horses or carry weapons. Perhaps because I was already castrated I found this further diminution galling. I had not so far flouted the law by carrying weapons or riding a horse but I had not put on a yellow belt and turban. In my mind I tried to, but could not, put into words my reasons for not wanting to be welcomed into a community of yellow turbans. Nor would I ever again be a member of any congregation other than that vast and erring one called the human race.

  ‘Matters between God and me have gone beyond synagogues and congregations,’ I said to the Rabbi and the Nagid. ‘I have no prayers.’

  ‘It’s not as if you can pass for a Muslim by denying us,’ said the Rabbi; ‘you will simply be known as the eunuch Jew who does not wear the yellow belt and turban.’

  ‘So be it,’ I said.

  Soon after Chanukah came the First Muharram, the new Muslim year, the Hijra year 490. On the Tenth Muharram Bembel Rudzuk fasted. ‘Not everyone fasts on this day which is akin to your Day of Atonement,’ he said. ‘And of course there are those who on this day pitch black tents and mourn the death of Husain at Kerbela. I am not devout in the usual sense of the word but I find that fasting refreshes my attention; so I do it because my attention is always flagging and there are times when I fail to see the she-camel.’

  ‘Tell me about this she-camel,’ I said.

  ‘In the Quran we read of a people called the Thamud,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘They dwelt in rocky places, they had their dwellings in the rock. There came to them a prophet, his name was Salih. He told the Thamud that he was bringing to them the Word of God but they asked him f
or proof. Salih then called upon Allah and there appeared from out of the solid rock a she-camel, pregnant.

  ‘This she-camel was an exemplary camel; she grazed and she found her way to water and in this way she showed that God’s gifts are meant for all of God’s creatures, that pasturage and water should not be held fast by the rich and kept from the poor, they should be freely shared.’

  ‘What happened with this camel?’ I said.

  ‘Those people of the rocks, those hard and stony people, Salih told them that the eye of God was upon them; he told them to be hospitable to the stranger-camel, to let it graze where it liked and not to withhold water from it. They laughed at him, the Thamud, and after the camel had given birth they hamstrung both the mother and the foal. They killed the camel and her child and they dared Salih to call down punishment upon them.

  ‘“Go to your houses,” he told them. “You have three days in which to prepare yourselves.” After three days the earth shook, thunderbolts crashed down among those people, the ground opened up, the rocks melted and ran down into the abyss, the people were annihilated; the Thamud people were no more.

  Those foolish Thamud people are often referred to in the Quran and thus are we reminded that not only is every she-camel the she-camel of God, but every other animal and all of us as well, we are all creatures of God. In every configuration of time and circumstance there is the she-camel of the matter to be discerned by those whose attention is strong and constant. All of us dwell in the stone and when the stone brings forth a she-camel we must take notice of it and respond appropriately. But it is so easy to see only the stone and not the camel; I am always afraid that I shall fail to see that she-camel of God.’

  All through the rains there was no word from Tower Gate. ‘Is he going to make the tiles or not?’ I said to Bembel Rudzuk.

  ‘I think he’s going to do it,’ said Bembel Rudzuk: ‘he hasn’t said no.’

  Passover that year came at the end of March. The day before the Eve of Passover Jews were to be seen selling their leaven to Muslims, and this little act of accommodation touched me. See, I thought, everyone does not wish us dead! and my eyes filled with tears. I remembered the Gentiles buying the leaven of the Jews in my town, the town of my boyhood and my young manhood, the town where I had climbed the ladder to Sophia. So far away it was already in space and time!

  On Passover Eve when Jews were reading the Haggadah at the Seder, when the door was left open and a cup of wine was poured for Elijah, I walked in the rain to Bembel Rudzuk’s empty stone square. Freed from the traditional observance of the festival my mind widened into the rain, into the night, widened across the space of time to Pharaoh’s Egypt, to the killing of the lamb without blemish, to the dipping of the hyssop in the blood, to the striking of the lintel and the sideposts with the blood, to the passing of dread wings in the night and the smiting of the first-born of Egypt, both man and beast. Ah, God! I thought, when will you learn! Why must your arm be stretched out against anyone? Why must you choose us to be yours and to be punished for ever by you and by the world? Then I remembered that God was no longer He. Perhaps as It he remembered nothing, perhaps like blind Samson he simply felt for the pillars and put forth his strength against them.

  And then, thinking those heavy thoughts in the rainy night I found myself laughing because it suddenly came to me that it was not only Passover for the Jews but Easter for the Christians; Christ having been crucified at Passover the two moon-coupled festivals were for all time chained together. In Antioch that night the Christians would be reciting the eternal crime of the Jews and worshipping their tortured Jew on his cross while that same cross in cloth of scarlet was moving eastwards on the shoulders of the Franks. While the Jewish doors of Antioch stood open for Elijah. When God was He there was nobody like Him for jokes.

  Spring came, the Franks arrived in Constantinople and the price of a bale of silk went up by three dinars in Tripoli. ‘As when the leaves of the olive trees show their undersides before the rain comes,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘These Franks inspire uncertainty, everyone is wondering what will happen next. Some think that fewer ships and caravans will be arriving and everything will be in short supply.’

  The weather grew fine, the wooden rod at the centre of the square cast a strong young shadow. My original chalk drawing and the drawing made by the speechless boy had both been washed away by the winter rains; the empty stone presented itself to the eye as if for the first time and the sun shone down as if there would never again be cold and wet, there would only be hot and dry. With the passing of days there began to arrive donkey-loads and camel-loads of triangular tiles, as startling in their actuality as Silpius, red and black and tawny as I had seen them in my mind. With the tiles there arrived workmen who unloaded the camels and the donkeys, sorted the tiles according to size and colour, stacked them on the paving stones, and began to mix mortar.

  In my hand was the wooden compass with which I had made my first drawing, and now I opened it once more to the radius that would summon to the surface of the stone that same circle I had first drawn in the darkness.

  I removed the rod, inserted the plug, placed the compass foot, and then it was as if the chalk line moved the outer compass leg before it as it closed itself into a circle. Again I developed the flower of six petals, and line by line out of it grew the hexagons and triangles of Hidden Lion.

  It was then that there appeared a fully armed man walking across the paved square towards us. ‘This man,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘is Firouz. He used to be a Christian, now he is a Muslim. He is an emir and he is close to our governor, Yaghi-Siyan. The Tower of the Two Sisters is under his command and two other towers as well.’

  I watched Firouz walking towards us and I found myself not liking the man. He had a way of half-turning as he walked: a half-turn this way, a half-turn that way. ‘He’s a turning sort of man,’ I said to Bembel Rudzuk.

  ‘He is indeed a turning sort of man,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘and more likely to take a bad turn than a good one. Try not to let yourself be drawn into a quarrel with him.’

  Firouz walked to the centre of the paved square; his shadow fell across my circles, triangles, and hexagons. He touched the central six-pointed star with his foot. ‘This is the star of the Jews, is it not?’ he said to Bembel Rudzuk. (By this time I had sufficient Arabic to follow the conversation.)

  ‘You have seen this star in Islamic patterns without number,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘You have seen it in mosques and palaces and in houses everywhere; even is it stamped by some of our Muslim merchants on the canvas coverings of bales.’

  ‘That may well be,’ said Firouz, ‘but at the same time it is a device used by the Jews, is it not?’ ‘It is one of many devices used by many people,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.

  ‘Was it drawn by you?’ said Firouz.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘it was.’

  Firouz’s demeanour was such that I knew it could only be a moment or two until he asked me if I was a Jew. I think that he already knew that I was but did not want to appear to have taken the trouble to inform himself of such a trifling event as my Jewish arrival in Antioch; he preferred rather to go through this play-acting in which he pretended only now to have his curiosity aroused by the six-pointed star.

  Such an interesting moment, that moment before someone who is not a Jew asks you if you are a Jew! The world being as it is, any live Jew is a survivor in that there will always be other Jews within living memory who are dead only because they were Jews. So whoever asks, ‘Are you a Jew?’ is saying at the same time, ‘Are you one of those who has not so far been slaughtered?’ To answer yes to this question has at one time and another assured the death of the answerer. At that moment in Antioch Jews were not being slaughtered but nevertheless the question would not be a neutral one, it would not be such a question as: ‘What do you think of our summer weather?’ No, it would be a question with an under-question: ‘Are you a Jew who dies without fighting or a Jew who makes trouble?’ />
  ‘As you say,’ said Firouz, still addressing his remarks to Bembel Rudzuk and affecting to take no notice of me, ‘it’s a star one sees everywhere. And yet this particular version of it, with all those triangles appearing at the same time to move inward and outward—there’s something one might almost call one-eyed about it, wouldn’t you say? Wouldn’t you say that the inward tends to be swallowed up by the outward in this design?’

  ‘One of the virtues of this simple but at the same time complex design,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘this design in which we see the continually reciprocating action of unity and multiplicity, is that it suits its apparent action to the mind of the viewer: those who look outward see the outward preeminent; those who look inward see the inward.’

  ‘Are you a Jew?’ said Firouz to me suddenly.

  ‘Hear, O Israel!’ I said in Hebrew, ‘The Lord our God, the Lord is One!’

  ‘I bear witness that there is no god but God and that Muhammad is the messenger of God,’ said Firouz. For a moment he stared at me wildly as if I had struck him in the face, then he turned to Bembel Rudzuk. ‘Has your Israelite friend registered for the tax payable by those non-Muslims who sojourn among us?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘he has been paying the tax since he first came to Antioch.’

  ‘See to it also,’ said Firouz, ‘that he dresses in accordance with his station and that he does not ride a horse or carry weapons.’ He turned on his heel, walked back across the square to where an attendant was holding his horse, mounted, and rode off towards the Tower of the Two Sisters, turning once in the saddle to look back.

  ‘This too will pass,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘Firouz is a man of moods and many of them are unpleasant. As we can do nothing about him we might as well get on with our work.’

  There came then to the centre of the square Tower Gate’s foreman. ‘You might as well fetch the bricks for the tower now,’ he said to some of the workmen: ‘that’ll be the next thing after we do this hexagon.’