Ahasuerus
Page 11
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
Traveler, handsome traveler, go on your way. I have no well or cistern. Those who inhabit my slopes are never thirsty.
AHASUERUS
Where have you planted your date-palms?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
I have neither dates nor date-palms. Those who live on my summit are never hungry.
AHASUERUS
Search your brushwood to see whether you might have a simple to heal a wound in the heart, like the iron of a spear.
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
My simples, in my brushwood, can heal all wounds, except a wound of the heart, when the thorn remains within it.
AHASUERUS
What is the country that surrounds you called?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
I am the valley to which every path leads. I am the empty sea, the road with no exit, the Ocean without waves, the desert without caravans, the Orient without sunlight. Everything hastens to sit down on my slopes. The little chamois that has just been born asks its mother: “Mother, where is the road to the great valley? The stork, when it grows old, leaves before daybreak to alight in my heather. When the leaf of an olive-tree in Andros falls, the wind brings it to me in its robe to make my litter. To render her soul, Greece piled up here, like winter leaves, beneath my Alexandrian palm-tree. Yesterday, I saw Rome landing in her galley on my Byzantine shore, stripped bare, in agony. Until now, I have had no name. Since the death of Christ, the entire Orient has been hollowed out in order to widen a bed in my side, a single tomb to which everyone will come to die. Today, my name is Jehosophat.
AHASUERUS
How do you amuse yourself during your long days?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
For a lover I have the jealous hawk, which gazes as me all day long from the height of my summit. If the hawk chances to close is yellow eyelid, I also like the cloud full of hail when it brushes my granite shoulders. After the cloud has passed, and it can no longer turn back, I like the roaring wind that calls to me at my door. In the first days of winter, I go to see whether the spider has woven its sheet of fine silk at the summit of my pyramids, or whether the idle worm has become bored sawing up the cadavers of old empires that the lions have brought me on their backs. From far away, I listen to the balcony of the crumbling lighthouse, the column that sinks down on its side, groaning, weary of carrying the crow on its head for such a long time, and the breathless sphinx that runs to seek shelter in the desert when the rain has demolished its lair in the temple. I also listen to the wild flower withering at the top of its stem, he old eagle that sheds its talons and beak one after another at the foot of its aerie, and the gnat that sheds its two wings in my valley.
AHASUERUS
Have you nothing else to do?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
I wait until dusk for the dead to return to life. At the sound of a chamois passing by, or a tear shed in a grotto, I become anxious, wondering whether it is a people sharpening a spear-point or a reed arrow in its sepulcher. As far as the Arab well sheltered by two cypresses, I go in search of a little water to help the crop of peoples and kings sown in my furrow germinate more rapidly. My anemones, when they blossom, will be the young daughters of princes, sitting in golden veils; my great lilies will be clouds that will tie their white turbans around their heads when they wake up; my aloe-flowers will be candelabras that priests will light on my slopes; my heather will be innumerable peoples who will sigh beneath the wind and the rain.
AHASUERUS
So the dead have not yet come?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
No, not yet.
AHASUERUS
Will they come tomorrow?
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
When the hundred-cubit hawk screeches, when he earth grows weary.
AHASUERUS
However late they come, let me wait for them on your boundary-marker. I’ll help you to draw water from our spring for the hawk, to pile up dead leaves for your litter. I’m a merchant from Joppa, weary of travel; hide me under a ledge of your rock; I find you more beautiful than a city with a hundred bastions, a hundred minarets, women beneath their veils and its king under an awning.
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
Merchant, handsome merchant of Joppa, to be so weary, you must have come from a distant land. Show me your jewels, I beg you.
THE ECHO continues
Is it true that you wear for relics—yes, for relics—your wound in your bosom, and for an idol—yes, for an idol—beneath your cloak, your dolor?
AHASUERUS
I have gone to where the earth ends, to where the boundless sea begins; I have been all the way to well-built Byzantium, if you know its name. On the wall of its basilica a cross-bearer from Nazareth was painted in solid gold, with twelve companions, who were pointed out to me. What point is there in going further? Ennui has gripped me. I have seen enough towers and turrets, columns and colonnettes, and battering rams beating on doors; I have seen how the world ends at its Caspian gate. Two angry lions on the steps forbid passage. After them, one of Odin’s stags, with antlers that one might have thought to be a thousand years’ growth like a forest on its head, blocks entry to the eternal mist. Further on, a crow croaks in its master’s ear beneath the ash-tree that bears the stars of heaven on its branches every year, by way of flowers. I plunged my silver-plated cup in the seething spring; it filled with tears. I called out in the forest; I heard a sigh like that of a weeping man. Now my journey is over; my soul upon my lips is disgusted. Keep me forever in your enclosure, which no sound ever reaches.
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
Handsome traveler, I can see from my summit a land to which you have not yet gone.
THE ECHO
And will you ever want to give me, to amuse me, your precious jewels, your debris of towers—yes, towers—your sculpted sepulchers, your bones of peoples—yes, peoples—and forgotten kingdoms?
AHASUERUS
Help me: an archer is pursuing me to steal the jewels from my satchel.
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
That archer is my master. He is two cubits taller than I am; he would see you, by standing up behind my summit.
AHASUERUS
At least let me stay until tomorrow.
THE VALLEY OF JEHOSOPHAT
Adieu. Don’t say anything more where the dead are asleep. I shall fall silent.
THE ECHO
Further on, further on: go all the way to the sea.
AHASUERUS
Give me, like the dead, a little water from the Arab well.
THE ECHO
My well is empty.
AHASUERUS
And your cup?
THE ECHO
It’s broken.
AHASUERUS
At least let me sit down on your bench.
THE ECHO
It’s full, and my door is bolted.
AHASUERUS
Lend me a little of your cool shade.
THE ECHO
Prophet, get out of my shade. Walk! Walk!
AHASUERUS
Truly, the voice of the mountain is an echo of the voice of Golgotha.
THE ECHO
Yes, Golgotha.
AHASUERUS
What? Go on, already, go on forever?
THE ECHO
Forever.
AHASUERUS
But no one here has cursed me.
THE ECHO
Cursed!
AHASUERUS
Oh well! Let’s get up, my heart! I’ll sit down further on.
THE ECHO
Further on, much further on!
IX.
THE EMPEROR DOROTHEUS12, standing on the walls of Rome
From the top of my highest tower, I’m watching for the arrival of my three messengers. The first has followed the road to Ravenna; the second has taken his ironclad sandals to climb over the Alps; the third has gone to where the Danube hollows out its bed. Oh, ho
w late they are in coming back. The shadows are growing at the foot of my towers, and the fear in my heart. Italy, what have you done that the storks are taking their young away from the roofs of Rome and Florence? I cannot, like them, take your cities away and hide them under tree-branches in the mountains and forests of Sardinia. What have your azure sky, your orange-blossom, your somnolent bays, your forests of myrtle your mountains of marble done that you are trembling like a slave fattened for the lions in the circus? If you were still asleep in the cradle of Rome, it least you could be hidden under a thatched roof, or an oak-wood; you could eat your bread in safety, like a child at his father’s door. For then your sun was mild, your sea placid, your islands perfumed, when your people were born with the grass of your shores; but now your rivers respire blood, and the hyssop of Golgotha is growing everywhere on your mountains. O Italy, what have you done? The noise that woke me in the night is getting closer at every moment; one might think that the horse of the Apocalypse were running frantically over the slopes of the Apennines, his hooves striking the tombs that border the roads of the empire.
(A messenger arrives at the foot of the tower.)
THE EMPEROR DOROTHEUS
Greetings, good messenger; what have you found on your route?
THE MESSENGER
I have found eagles screeching in the forest and wolves howling in the ravines. Is that not the noise that woke you?
(Another messenger arrives.)
THE EMPEROR DOROTHEUS
And you, good messenger, tell me what you have heard.
THE MESSENGER
I have heard avalanches in the Alps sliding into the depths of valleys, and stags belling under the branches of ash-trees. Is that the noise that has kept you awake?
(A third messenger arrives.)
THE EMPEROR DOROTHEUS
And you, who wear ironclad sandals, tell me what you have seen.
THE MESSENGER
I have seen the green waters of the Danube, rumbling over granite rocks, like the voice of an angry crowd.
(In the distance)
CHORUS OF BARBARIAN PEOPLES
CHORUS OF GOTHS
Do you know a good signs for the man of war? It is a good sign if the clash of the blade is accompanied by the cry of the crow and the howls of Freya’s she-wolf under the ash-tree Yggdrasil. The mountain vulture knows the path where the wild horse that it shadows with its wings will die; and we too know the oak beneath which the Roman mare has fallen, which our claws will tear apart. Norns and Valkyries, mingle in your cauldrons the eagle’s beak, Sleipnir’s teeth and elephant’s ivory that form the runs of combat and give wisdom to the teeth that touch them. By the edge of the shield, the prow of the ship, the tip of the sword, the wheel of the chariot and the foam of the sea, follow us, be propitious for us. The raven is leaning over Odin’s shoulder to repeat our words in his ear; the stag is running through the forest and nourishing himself on the branches of the ash-tree that shades the gods. And we are marching, after him, over the dead leaves of the forests. We are heading southwards, like the melting snow that flows down into the valleys.
CHORUS OF HERULES
Let us take one another’s hand for a war dance. The women of the Danube are raising up their swan-like bodies in the river to watch us pass by. But the north wind is our king; he is sending us to cast to the ground the leaves of orange-trees and the flowers of the vine. Oh, let us march with great strides before the figs ripen and the lemons fall of their own accord at the feet of the trees, and the grapes dry up on the vine. One more day, and we shall find the peel of the oranges swept away from around the woods.
CHORUS OF HUNS
Mount up! Mount up! Tomorrow you shall finish braiding the manes of wild stallions. Mount up in the plain and on the mountain! The fays13 are suspended by their tangled hair; gnomes and gnomides are biting the rumps and tails of the horses as they run. Mane upon mane, nostril against nostril, in the distance, in the open, all around, let our horde pass like a winter cloud over the Mongolian steppes; rapid as the sun sets, and more rapid when the morning begins to gleam, and more rapid still beneath the burning sun of day, and then, after the day, in the darkness of the night. Woe to him who turns his head to look back! A winged djinni that is following him will cast him to the ground and throw him to the vultures. Look! The grass is still depressed by the feet of archers who have gone ahead of us; their arrows will reach the target before ours. We shall arrive when the treasure of Italy has been pillaged, and the cup of Gaul has been drunk to the lees.
CHORUS OF FAYS
Without deception, this is a strange voyage. The grass is drying out beneath the breath of horses; magical songs can be heard in their manes. If we could die, we would be afraid. For a thousand years we have trembled beneath the turf of the mountains of Scythia. Our cheeks have wrinkled there in blowing on our hands to warm them. Every day we have found a green oak branch full of dew in the wood to nourish us, and yet we have lived better than gods fattened on the blood of oxen and horses. But today, handsome horsemen, your anger causes us to swoon. Wherever you pause, please leave some old wall standing, where we might shelter beneath the threshold of a door, a bolt of linen for us to dress ourselves, and a little dry wood to bring our cauldrons to the boil.
ONE OF ATTILA’S CHILDREN
Why can our horses not pause, Father? Why is our shadow the color of blood? Do you see that old man up there in a stone niche? His head is leaning out of the window; he is singing as we pass by; his hands are holding a book, on which his eyes are lowered. He’s doubtless a wise man, Father; perhaps he knows where we’re going.
ATTILA, to the hermit
Companion in your niche, our horses are sweating blood, and cannot stop. Do you know where this road leads? We have grazed our herds in the mountains of Scythia. If you can tell me why the wind is chasing us, why the shadows are bloody, why the horses are panicking, I will give you a golden cup full of my mare’s milk.
THE HERMIT
Archers and horsemen, you are arriving very late. Yesterday, I came to meet you. I was waiting for you here, riffling through my book. The vultures have passed by, and the crows thereafter. The wolves arrived at my door last night and I showed them the way. Only you have stayed so late at the doors of your huts.
ATTILA
What has happened then, companion? Your eyes are sparkling in your niche like those of a hawk in its nest; your book is shining like the book of death.
THE HERMIT
Tell me whether you have not heard the rivers sobbing in the valleys while you were taking too long to saddle your horses and fold up your tents? Have you not encountered two stars on your route shining like the eyes of a man in agony, a cloud rolling over the mountains like a blood-stained shroud, a forest moaning like the songs of a priest beside a tomb? Those are my eyes shining in the stars, my cloak hanging in the cloud, my voice moaning in the forest. It is because Christ is dead. He is dead, my son, the God of the earth, and my archangels are driving your horses past my door with whips. Don’t stop to drink at my well, don’t seek shade beneath my porch. Go! Run! Efface beneath your feet the blood that still stains the earth; uproot the cities before I have finished the last page of my book. In place of the peoples, make a great cemetery in which coarse grass will grow, as in the garden of my cell. Three days you shall march; you shall cross two rivers; afterwards, you will have arrived.
ATTILA
Is it you, then, in that narrow niche, who are the Eternal? I was told that you lived in a diamond tent on a mountain of gold! While we pass by, cover your hawk’s eyes with your eyelids, and your flamboyant book with a flap of your robe. My quiver is yours. When an archer of our tribe dies in combat, we make him a tomb with clods of earth, with iron and the bones of horses, with amulets and the blood of thirty prisoners. Since he is dead, your son, the God of the earth, we shall make his funeral with the bones of peoples, with the ruins of cities, with the gold of crowns, until you say: “That’s enough.”
; THE HERMIT
Dusk is approaching. The horses are whinnying. On the way back, they shall sleep in my stable.
INTERLUDE OF THE SECOND DAY
CHORUS OF OLD MEN
1.
Spectators of the mystery, bourgeois of France, merchants, citizens, on all matters, the chorus has always given, in moments of repose, the wisest advice, principally on public affairs. Thus Aeschylus and Aristophanes built their renown, those semi-divine men, great citizens as they were, and such as nature will never make again, tomorrow or thereafter, two similar individuals with as much intelligence as bold courage; to the condemnation of Euripides, who, by contrast, endeavored to flatter the public and corrupt them by means of wordy reverences and genuflections, and only obtained therefrom this smoke and a great waste of praise. Thus, I shall tell you, without waiting for this day’s end, that many things displease me in your Estate: first of all, your frivolity; secondly, your vanity, and thirdly, your avidity.