Pilgermann

by Russell Hoban

  The sky stays grey the next day and rain comes pelting down like hopelessness turned into water; the earth becomes a soggy boggy mire; the river swallows up its banks, it is no longer to be trifled with, soon it must run over the bridge instead of under it, soon it must lose patience with this city, must rush it brick by brick and stone by stone away into the sea that drowns Muslims, Christians, and Jews impartially and says nothing about God, nothing about justice or mercy. Dismally falls the rain on Silpius, and slides of mud and stones go down the mountainside to join the ponderous rolling rush of Onopniktes that bellows and echoes under Antioch as if fulfilling a prophecy, as if it has been foretold centuries ago that when the mountain will have passed under the city a monstrous thing will happen, perhaps the end of all things will come; or worse, some great beast taller than the mountain will appear and say at the same time and with one voice in all the languages of humankind that there will be no end to anything, that everything will go on and on for ever.

  Those thousands of Franks who rode off in the night come squelching back now under the grey sky and the rain. These thousands, we hear, have been led by Bohemond of Taranto and Robert of Flanders. Moving up the Orontes valley they have run into the armies of Duqaq, Tughtagin, and Janah al-Dawla coming from Damascus to relieve Antioch. We are told that Bohemond has learned how to fight Turks now, that he kept his cavalry in the rear to prevent the encirclement of Robert’s men and then charged in at the right moment. So they have driven back the Turks, Bohemond and Robert and their thousands; they have won a battle but they have lost men, they have worn themselves out, and they have come back empty-handed to their rotting and sodden tents in the mud and such treats as horses’ heads without the tongues for three solidi and goats’ intestines for five.

  Here they are then, the conquerors of Antioch held back from the conquering of it; it is like holding back the bull from the cow: he paws the earth, he rolls his eyes, his breath steams on the air. All that makes him a bull is hot and ready. But the cow is a cow of stone.

  What is the nature of things? The nature of things is that what can happen will happen, often it has already happened before it is recognized. The walls of Antioch were built during the reign of Justinian, a time of strong stonemasonry; those walls are not be knocked down or undermined, and any attacker who scales them will only find himself on a short stretch of rampart between the massive towers with a bitter rain of arrows hissing down and the strong doors of the towers barred against him. How then can the Franks breach the unbreachable, pass the impassable? How can Antioch be taken? It can be taken if someone on the wall will turn away from his duty, it can be taken if someone will open the strong tower doors and let the soldiers of Christ in quietly. And will someone be found to do this? What a question! Such a question can only be asked by an atheist; anyone who recognizes the existence of God (whether as He or as It) and the intersections of virtuality and actuality is well aware of how easily such crossings on the plane of possibility can be sucked up into a point of happening. After the event one looks at all the many lines converging on the point and marvels because it seems that people were born, nations assembled, geography organized, roads laid out and bridges built expressly so that this event could happen. So rise now to a point of happening the turningness of Firouz and the unturningness of Bohemond, the one on what is called the inside and the other on what is called the outside of the walls of the four hundred towers, those stones that have no enemy.

  At this time that I am telling of I have so far seen Bohemond only at a considerable distance. There is of course no mistaking him, he is so astonishingly tall, taller than most men by half an arm’s length. When I see Bohemond, when I think of Bohemond, I know that I am seeing and thinking of more than Bohemond: as the arrow streaks to its target the point of the arrow is driven by the shaft behind it, the feathers that make the shaft fly true, and the bow that has loosed the energy of its bending into the flight of the arrow; so comes Bohemond from the loins of his father Robert Guiscard and the womb of his mother Alberada of Buonalbergo. But Bohemond’s lineage is more than human, it includes generations of horses; the line of Bohemond goes back to Eohippus, the dawn horse, the very beginning of all chivalry. And yet the most prepotent of Bohemond’s ancestors was neither a human nor an animal but an artifact: Bohemond is descended mainly from the stirrup. Bohemond is grown out of an aristocracy of warriors on horseback rising from the cavalry of Charles Martel; this aristocracy comes to the point of the present in the armoured man on the heavy horse with his feet firm in the stirrups that give power to the drive of his lance, the swing of his sword; the armoured man strong in the saddle, bred to fight and trained from boyhood to be unturning in attack; the armoured man superior in wealth, in breeding, in physique and in confidence to the man on foot.

  Bohemond’s ancestors of the fifth century who fought under Chlodovech, they fought without armour and on foot, they hurled axes and barbed javelins, God knows what stocks and stones they offered to. What did they know of Jerusalem? How in the world has Bohemond come to be a soldier of Christ? How has Bohemond become the Bohemond who cut up his scarlet cloak into crosses? This is not to be known by me, I shall die without knowing it.

  Bohemond is always in my mind but I have no chance of understanding him. When he was first pointed out to me I was high up on the wall looking down at his distant figure but in my thoughts he at once took his place high up as if striding on ramparts built for him alone. He is everything that I am not, this quintessential warrior prince. I am told that he can, fully armed, leap from the ground to his horse’s back; that no other man can wield with two hands the sword he wields with one; that he requires three women nightly to keep him tranquil; that he is a serpent in cunning, a thunderbolt in attack, he is simply not to be withstood. Red-haired and blue-eyed, he does what he wants and he gets what he wants. How should I not be obsessed with Bohemond? But his thoughts are beyond my imagination. In my drift through this space called time I have reported two dreams of Pope Urban II and I know that, whether virtually or actually, they are true. They are there, I have experienced them. But of Bohemond I can offer nothing sure, only intimations, only things half-sensed, half guessed-at. As the animals of the forest scent the questing hound I scent him, questing through the death of Christ and God’s departure, questing on the track of gold and fame and power, questing for the tangible, the visible, questing for that which cannot be mistaken, that which can be held in the strong hand, that which can be gripped between strong thighs as a horse is gripped.

  So. Bohemond is encamped before the walls of Antioch and now we are in the year 1098. Bohemond, greedy and lusting for the seen, cannot yet have what he craves; that time is not yet come. As I say this there comes into my mind an image of Bohemond opposed by Bembel Rudzuk; it is a night image, the background of it is darkness; against the darkness the two figures are luminous, they leap out of the dark, stopped in mid-motion as if by lightning—Bohemond with the gleam of his helmet, the glitter of his mail, the flash of his great sword, the scarlet cross on his surcoat, the iron nasal and the straight brow-line of his helmet simplifying his face, the face of the death-angel haloed by the rainbow arc of the great sword. Bohemond the death-angel, Bohemond the questing death-hound circling in the night beyond the circle of Christ’s little wander-fire. Bohemond the tall, lit by the lightning as he leaps with his death-bringing, with his blood-drinking sword. And leaping at him with a flash of the gold brocade on his elegant scarlet jacket, with his Turkish sword heroic against the death-hound, with his moustaches heroic, Bembel Rudzuk the dauntless, Bembel Rudzuk who is at the same time like a lion of innocence, like an angel of folly, like a butterfly transfixed by the pin of actuality, Bembel Rudzuk the friend true unto death.

  That is the image, held motionless against the dark as if by lightning, that comes into my mind as I think of the never-to-be-known, never-to-be-understood Bohemond. Simple greed, simple ambition, simple unlimited courage do not suffice to explain this man. Nothing I ha
ve so far said explains Bohemond. As one who is not a mathematical genius cannot understand one who is, so I cannot understand this genius of maleness and action; even simply counting up his attributes and his actions one arrives at something that cannot be accounted for: the total of the seen becomes the unseen, becomes a mystery. Bohemond has in the mystery of him such force as to make him a kind of un-Christ; in the greatness of his courage and his greed he looms gigantic; almost Death stands aside at the sound of his name and his great bones stand up shouting. His tomb in Apulia is domed, it has Romanesque arches, it has bronze doors. Sometimes as Pilgermann the owl I sit on the dome of Bohemond’s tomb in the twilight when it is still warm from the last sun of the day.

  But it is the year 1098 that I tell of now; the bones of Bohemond are still in active partnership with his flesh and I have not yet achieved owlhood. It is February, a Turkish army is again on its way to the relief of Antioch, and this time Rudwan of Aleppo is with them. The Frankish cavalry is much diminished now; they must have less than a thousand horses fit for war. I cannot help thinking of those battles in the Holy Scriptures in which God would diminish the armies of the children of Israel the better to show his power; I have come to believe that God, having departed, now wills that nothing should stand between the Franks and Jerusalem.

  Bohemond does not wait for the Turks to come to Antioch; he leaves the foot-soldiers and the horseless cavalry to defend the camp against further sorties and with that cavalry numberless in arrogance but many times outnumbered by the enemy he moves out to take up a position between the Orontes and the Lake of Antioch where he cannot be encircled. Needs must when the devil drives, and he has learned by now that the harrying, stinging, in-and-out, encircling tactics of the Turks must be met with equal cunning if he is to beat them. And of course he does. On first sight of the Turks the Franks charge before the Turkish archers can be effectively disposed, then they withdraw, luring the Turks into that space between the lake and the river, that space chosen for the battle. Here the Frankish cavalry do again what they do better than anyone else, the straight charge with lance in rest. So again the relieving army is put to flight by Bohemond, by that unturning battle-greed of his. So ardent is he in his pursuit of the enemy that the points of his crimson banner, we hear, fly over the heads of the rearmost Turks.

  Here at Antioch the absence of Bohemond reliably brings Yaghi-Siyan out through the bridge gate for yet another sortie on the Frankish encampment where there are only men on foot to oppose him. Things are going badly for the horseless Franks, the time must seem long to them until Bohemond returns in the afternoon like the sun and Yaghi-Siyan, like a wooden foul-weather figure, goes back inside. The soldiers of Christ put Turkish heads on poles outside their camp to stare with dead eyes at the walls of Antioch until the flesh rots away and they are no longer heads but skulls.

  The Franks have so far held off two attempts to relieve the city but they have not yet been able to close it off completely from the world. The Suwaydiyya road, though no longer travelled by caravans, is still used by enterprising traders at unlikely hours and for high profits. Supplies are also moving through the Ladhiquiyya Gate at carefully chosen times.

  At the beginning of March we hear of ships at Suwaydiyya and we hear that they bring to the Franks fighting men and horses, siege technicians from Constantinople, timber and every kind of tackle for the building of siege towers and giant war machines, also apparatus capable of shooting Greek fire from the far side of the Orontes into the centre of Antioch. There is little doubt that Antioch will soon be in Frankish hands unless the siege materials are intercepted.

  It is Bohemond and Raymond who one night lead their men to Suwaydiyya to bring in the materials and the reinforcements. About an hour after their departure we hear the horsemen trotting to and from Yaghi-Siyan’s palace, hear the shouting of commands, the slap and jingle, the shuffling and snuffling and whinnying as cavalrymen ready their horses and themselves. They ride out on the Suwaydiyya road and we of the civilian militia together with soldiers of the garrison man the walls to watch the Frankish camp and wait.

  It is while I stand on this wall built by a Roman emperor and keep watch on the Franks with a Turkish bow in my hand that I find myself reflecting on where I am and what I am doing. It isn’t that I haven’t taken notice of the separate parts of it but somehow I haven’t taken notice of how the parts look when they’re all put together. I am carrying weapons that I was taught to use by a Muslim (we non-Muslims of the militia are now permitted to go armed) and I am keeping watch on the walls of this city that is being held by Muslims against Christians who call themselves soldiers of Christ. Bohemond himself may at any time come climbing over this wall with his sword that only he can wield with one hand, Bohemond the battle-greedy, the death-hound.

  To this has my late-night walking in the Keinjudenstrasse brought me. And yet each step of the way had nothing surprising in it. There was the garden, there was the ladder; up I climbed to that naked and incomparable Sophia and here I am.

  This castration that I have suffered, has it a use, has it a value? What was I before I was castrated? I was already castrated, was I not, by mortality? All of us are castrated by mortality, we are unmanned, unwomanned, we are made nothing because all we have is this so little space of time with a blackness before and after it (that I speak out of this blackness as Pilgermann is only a borrowing; it is to unself and the namelessness of potential being that I must return when I have said what I have to say). How to live then in this little space in which we have a self and a name, this little space in which we are allowed to accumulate our tiny history of tiny days, this moment that is at once the first moment and the last moment, this moment that contains our universe and such space/time as is unwound in the working of it?

  We don’t want to know about our mortal castration. We throw ourselves into the work of each day, the beating of hammers, the baking of bread; we find ourselves a spouse, we gather children around us to keep out the dark, we keep the Sabbath, pray to God, hope that all will be well. Ah, but there is more! Not for this alone was there smoke and fire and a quaking on the mountain while the voice of the horn sounded louder and louder. No, there is a mystery that even God cannot fathom, nor can he give the law of it on two stone tablets. He cannot speak what there are no words for; he needs divers to dive into it, he needs wrestlers to wrestle with it, singers to sing it, lovers to love it. He cannot deal with it alone, he must find helpers, and for this does he blind some and maim others. ‘Look,’ God has said to me, ‘what must I do to make you play the man? I have already castrated you with mortality but you pay no attention to it. So now let it be done with a knife, then let’s see what happens. Let’s see if you’ll grow yourself some new balls and jump into the mystery with me.’

  ‘But what’s it all about?’ I cry.

  ‘If I could tell you that it wouldn’t be a mystery,’ says God. ‘Let it be enough that I ask for your help.’ (God has of course not actually been speaking here because he is no longer manifesting himself as He; but God as It has put these words into my mind.)

  This is then the value and the use of my castration; with this must I be content. If even God in his omniscience doesn’t know the answer then each of us must help however possible. And think how it would be if God could give the answer, if God could say, ‘All right, here it is: the answer is this and this and this and this; now you know the answer.’ Who would then have any respect for God, who would even have any interest in Him? ‘What!’ we should say, ‘Is this the best you can do? Is there to be no mystery then? Feh!’

  ‘I know what you mean,’ says the man in front of me in Turkish with an Italian accent. While thinking the thoughts that I have just been telling of I have been pacing my stretch of wall and I have come face to face with this remarkable Mordechai Salzedo of whom I have spoken once before: it was he who cited from Genesis the words, ‘Where he is’ when we met in the street by the synagogue before Rosh Hashanah.

  This Sal
zedo has come to Antioch by a route even less direct than mine. He was born in Barbastro in Spain and as a child of seven he escaped from the town when it was sacked by the French in 1064. Those Christian armies dealt with the Muslims and Jews of Barbastro in the traditional way, and when his mother lay dead with her skirt over her head and his father with his guts wound round a post young Salzedo crept away quietly to try his luck elsewhere. He fell in with a company of wine merchants, Italian Jews who were on their way to Barcelona, went with them when they sailed back to La Spezia, was taken into the family of one of the partners, grew up to marry one of the daughters, became a partner in the house, lost his wife when their ship bound from Cagliari in Sardinia to Bizerta in Tunisia sank in a storm, clung to a wineskin and drifted for three days, was picked up by a Neapolitan business associate, decided to go into textiles, came to Antioch to sell wine and buy silks and cottons, fell into conversation with Bembel Rudzuk, was unable to disengage himself, and so set up in business and settled here.

  ‘What do you mean, you know what I mean?’ I say.

  ‘I noticed how you were shaking your head,’ he says, ‘and I said to myself: this man has in his mind the same thought that I have in mine.’

  ‘And what is that thought?’ I say.

  ‘That to be a Jew is to find yourself doing all kinds of things in all kinds of places,’ he says. ‘Here we are keeping watch against the Franks on a wall built by a Roman emperor around a city now held by Turks.’