by Edgar Quinet
RACHEL
Oh, Mob, why do you say that? I’ll follow you, and obey you, I promise—but don’t remind me of those times.
MOB
Do you prefer the time when I met you for the first time, on the day of Christ’s death? Do you remember when all the angels—you were in the middle of them—leaned over the clouds and wept? When Christ leaned on Ahasuerus’ house and cursed Ahasuerus—do you remember?
RACHEL
Did you say Ahasuerus?
MOB
And when all the angels were quivering with anger, who was it who had a tear in her eye for Ahasuerus? Who looked down on him from on high with pity? Who forgot Christ, during the flap of a vulture’s wing: Christ, who was dying for the living Ahasuerus, the immortal Ahasuerus, the wandering Ahasuerus? Then, to whom did the voice of God speak, when it said: “You shall no longer be an angel of life; you shall no longer live in the Celestial City; you shall live in Mob’s house; you shall be hers, to light her fire, to sing her songs, to drink the ashes that remain in the bottom of her glass?” And today, who is mine, all mine, flesh and bone? Who waters my bouquets of marigolds and scabious15 on my windowsill, if it is not Rachel, Rachel the archangel with the blue wings, eyes the color of the sky, and tresses that shakes light around them; who learned to spell out one by one in her book, with the children of the City of God, the notes of the music of Heaven. That Rachel despises me, I know. She no longer has wings with which to fly, but the thoughts of her heart fly away from my house like a vapor rising from the mown grass in the evening. She no longer has her viol with which to sing, but she still hums tunes at the window that cause passers-by the stop. Who are you to scorn me? You had an aureole around your head; now your hair is tied up in the silver plait of a daughter of Worms. You had a blue cloak in which to dress yourself; now you have a woolen dress that the local weaver made for you. When you go into town, the old women you meet say: “What can old Mob be thinking, not to have married off that girl? Truly, does no one want her? The weaver’s son is looking for a wife; the weaver’s son earns a silver sou every month; he ought to marry her, out of kindness.”
RACHEL
My heart hurts, Mob; let me kneel down and pray to God with all my soul.
MOB
Pray with your lips alone, if you can. What has he to do with your soul? Do you not think the prayers of desiccated leaves, of the hazel when it dies, of the ash when it is sown, of the lamp when it goes out, are worth more to him than the prayer of your soul? You should have thought of your soul when you had two blue wings to carry you and the sky to fly in. Pray today? Oh, pray if you want to, as the worn paving-stones of cathedrals and stained-glass windows effaced by the mist pray; pray like a drop of rain in a cellar, a banner eaten away on its pike-staff, a worm in the damp earth. What have you to do, sitting on your wicker chair, gazing at a patch of sky through the pane of your window? You can’t enter the world of dreams any more.
RACHEL
Mob, I’ll kiss your hands, but don’t say that it was a dream. Oh, don’t say that—you’ll drive me mad!
MOB
Get away! Forget those miters of light, those golden aureoles; wither in your hear those flowers of light, those flaps of vermilion cloaks. Instead of the songs of Heaven, listen to the song of the cricket on your hearth; pale in your soul, until death, the chubby faces of your Seraphim. The viol of the archangels is finished for you, I tell you. Like a young woman who throws the faded roses of the ball into her alcove when she returns home, throw away your memories; throw away your blue sky, your infinite hopes. All you know of the world is what happens above the clouds. Real life, my dear, is slightly different from those adolescent fantasies. Follow me, clinging to the hem of my dress; I’ll show you what you’ve never seen, in all things: the dried-up spring; the desiccated bark; the broken heart; the empty cup.
RACHEL
Everyone here believes that I’m your daughter; I’ve never told anyone my secret, I swear. My God, if I’d only known once, in all these years, what the children with their aureoles that I cradled in Heaven are doing!
MOB
Do you really think that anyone up there still cares what your heart thinks? Oh, if you hadn’t lost your wings I’d gladly refer you to others with my silk mantle, but your heart isn’t what it was. Nowadays, the gaze and smiles of Heaven wouldn’t mend it; it’s necessary that it get drunk in its turn on the last tear hidden in the gazes of passers-by. Get away! When you’ve collected dead leaves in the forest for me, go and beg for a loving sigh for yourself if you want; when you’ve filled my glass of tears for me, go fill for yourself your glass of promises and your dreams of young men; but don’t talk about angels any more. You’re a woman, and your bosom trembles like a woman’s; your eyes are lowered and your cheeks go pale when you go along the street. When the sound of the organ reaches your window in the evening, when the wind brings you the flowers of chestnut-trees, you weep without praying. Oh, just remember the angels of Gomorrah; I command you to forget all the rest.
III.
The prelude to a serenade is audible in the street.
A STUDENT
Yes my friends, she lives here. Go look under that window, where she has sown bouquets of mignonettes and marigolds. She’s there, be sure of it, behind those leaded windows. Wait a while longer. My God, my heart’s trembling like a leaf! I can’t sing. Am I mad? I’ve been looking for her for three months without being able to talk to her. You now, now that I’m a doctor, I could marry her tomorrow—if she wanted to.
A MUSICIAN
Is it really possible, Doctor, that you’ve never yet spoken to her?
THE STUDENT,
Oh, never! I once sent her a bouquet of wallflowers; that’s all. But her mother seems to be a worthy woman; I’m sure that she’ll come to an understanding with mine to live with us in Linange. Since I’ve been at the university, my eyes haven’t seen any other girl than Rachel. Come on, my friends; my heart can’t hold still any more. Let’s begin.
A MUSICIAN
Our viols are ready; our bows are folding over our strings. Courage! Sing loud!
THE STUDENT, singing
Tell me, my bride, what you’re hiding beneath our long black hair.
Is it a snowflake that fell on your way home from Christmas mass?
Is it the foam of the Rhine chased by a storm as you walked on the bank?
Is it a newly-born white swan that has already spread its wings?
If it’s the snowflake, let me drink it, on returning from a long voyage.
If it’s the foam of the Rhine, let me moisten my brown hair with it.
If it’s a newly-born swan, let me take it to the mountain-top.
“No, what I’m hiding in my long black hair is none of those things;
“It’s the bosom of your bride, where you set your head to sleep this evening.”
MOB, at the window
Bravo, my lords! The music is beautiful, and well-played. It’s too much honor for poor folk like us. Let me come down to the street to thank you. (She comes down.) My lords, I’ve brought wine from my cellar to refresh you; here’s a large cup that I’ve filled to the brim for you; I wish I had better; I picked it myself from my own vine, I swear to you, and pressed it I my own press. See how it sparkles! The color is perhaps a little dark, and the foam at the edge resembles the foam that moistens the bit of the horses of the night, isn’t it? Just taste it and drink it; it will cure your fatigue. It cures songs as well as tears. The cup is pure ebony-wood; I sculpted it myself during the winter evenings.
A MUSICIAN
Since you offer, we won’t refuse.
MOB
You’re too honest, my lord. Pass the cup on to all your companions.
(They all drink, and fall down.)
THE STUDENT, throwing away the empty cup
Damnation! It’s the cup and wine of death.
(He dies.)
MOB
Poor fools! But isn’t death the intoxicat
ion of life? Let him go to sleep it off under the table of the world, until the great revelry of the last judgment.
IV.
AHASUERUS, sitting on a bench at the city gate.
His horse is lying beside him on the road, dying.
1.
O Christ! Release me, O Christ! If I were a boar tracked by dogs I could escape by night to my lair. If I were a branch of dead wood, a woodcutter would pick me up and take me to his fire. If I were an earthworm, I’d go to sleep beneath a cool cellar, in the tomb of a king, and I’d spin my damp web around his damp crown. O woodcutter of Nazareth, take me, take me on my arid road. Gravedigger of Bethlehem, bury me in your sepulcher, where the rain and the dew trickle; take me in your eternal shroud, in the depths of the sculpted rock in your Calvary of Golgotha. Mercy!
2.
Who cried for mercy? Is that you, Ahasuerus? Oh, the angels in the highest heavens will laugh. Have you forgotten the cross-bearer who went past your door in Jerusalem? What have you stuffed in your ears in order that his voice should no longer ring around you? And in your eyes, in order that they should no longer see his flamboyant eyes, and the finger of the hand that he raised beneath his mantle? Speak, Ahasuerus; what did you do that day? The stony path that leads to Golgotha, that dead fig-tree, that drunken crowd beneath the fig tree, those women dragging themselves along on their knees, the hoarse sobs on their lips, and that voice, which resonated in the marrow of your bones: you remember that, don’t you?
You’d like it to be a dream, a thousand-year dream, wouldn’t you? But it’s not a dream, any more than that stork passing over your head, which is going to seek your shelter in the reeds, and nor are you the child of your dream. Can’t you feel your heart weighing in your bosom like a heavy stone in the arm of a sling-wielder? And that city, too, is no phantom formed beneath the tomb of a dead man’s skull. Its cobblestones are resounding, its battlements glistening, its bells ringing, and its church, to curse you, is kneeling beneath its towers like a ma dragging himself along on his hands beneath the weight of his cross.
Knock on any of those doors; at each of them there are people like you; they have eyes like you, not to devour, like you, an eternal tear, but to bathe, during their brief summer, in loving gazes; they have lips like you, but not to drink, like you, the dust of valleys and the salt of the earth, but to rink their rapid lives from the lips of heir new spouses; they have arms like you, not to hug, like you, the north wind and the sirocco, but to hug the child of their bones to their bosom.
From all the houses, choose whichever you wish. Go to the threshold with your iron-clad shoes, and the women will hide their eyes in the men’s bosoms, and the little children, will slide between their father’s legs in horror, crying: “It’s him, Father! It’s the Wandering Jew!”
3.
Oh, if only I were still a young companion of the tribe of Levi, in my father’s house; if only this crenellated city were Jerusalem, Jerusalem the beautiful, Jerusalem the perfumed, like a flowering vine in the rock, I would sing a song on my return, loudly, in order to be heard by the lepers and the camel-drivers. And passers-by would come, and they would touch my clothes and say: “Is that you, Ahasuerus? May you be blessed, good Ahasuerus! How long your journey has been! Where have you come from? Your mother has sent us to wait for you. Here are figs for your hunger; here is wine for your thirst.”
Your father, whom you thought dead, would be sitting on the bench of your house, and your little brothers will leap over their mats when they see you from afar on the road, saying “Brother, Brother, what have you brought us? Is it sea-shells that sing? Is it a colored woolen robe for the cold? Is it a new silver coin? Is it an embroidered belt, or a shiny cassolette of good Lebanon wood?”
4.
Ah, in my cassolette there is neither myrrh nor incense, nor powdered gold, nor dates; on my belt, there is nether pearls nor embroidery; and the woolen robe I wear was not woven for celebration. I have seen Jerusalem again, but it was no more Jerusalem than this place. When I returned, the bones whitening there got up to see me pass. My house was still standing. The window was open; the door bolted shut. In the garden, I saw my empty tomb; an Angel of Death covered it with his two silken wings to prevent me from resting there by day or night, like the crow who shelters his brood beneath his breast when it rains.
5.
Christ’s gaze is attached to my soul as a dead man’s lamp is attached by its copper bring to a sepulchral pillar, to illuminate in the night the tongues of the vipers and the mouths of the scorpions who are eating him away: a gaze devoid of tears, devoid of movement; two brazen eyes weighing upon my eyelids. For a heritage, he has transmitted to me his immortal dolor and his bloody sweat. He has dug into my bosom with his eyes; he has ignited his inferno and his limbo there, that king of the dead, but no heaven.
“Others shall have my tunic; you shall have what remains of the hyssop and the bile.” But King, I’m drunk on your hyssop; my knees are bending like those of a guest leaving a full table, and since that time, I swear to you, I’ve walked without pause. I’ve seen hawks on the summit of the Vourcano flying over my head, round the monastery, and their circles extend far enough to touch the sea on the far horizon; I’ve seen a flock of teal bathing in the Lake of Perugia, and the water trembling beneath their wings, rippling all the way to the bank. Everywhere, I’ve seen, in the depths of my soul, despair born and grow and overflow, to the extent of enclosing the mud of my days and the algae of my dreams in its infinite shores.
6.
Where are you, then, king of the dead? In searching for you, I’ve worn away the soles of my feet; I’ve dug, like the vulture, beneath the ashes of cities and the mantles of the dead. The sea resembles the blue of your tunic; I’ve searched the hollows of the sea. Rome, which sweats blood, resembles, with its walls, your crown of thorns; I’ve searched in Rome. The whitening desert resembled your shroud; I’ve searched in the desert. I’ve asked women threading their distaffs, children eating their oat-bread by the door, horse-drovers braiding their hemp in the words: “Have you see him pass by?” Where are you, then, king of the dead!
7.
When I was ten years old, I watched the storks and cranes resting on the neighboring roofs on returning from their journeys. I would have liked them to tell me what was on the other side of the mountain, and tell me what they had seen beneath the foliage of the woods and the rushes of springs. When the pigeons gathered to depart, my heart rose up in my breast, and from afar I followed their flight, like the evaporating smoke of a shepherd’s fire.
8.
No, the cranes and storks have not traveled as far as me, and the pigeons have not drunk from as many springs as me. The mountain springs have the taste of absinthe. The flowers in the meadows bear crosses the color of blood on their leaves. The woods moan when I pass by; grottoes weep when I go into them; the earth resonates beneath my iron-clad shoes like the stone of a tomb on Calvary. Since you have emerged from your sepulcher, Jesus of Nazareth, tell me, by means of the cry of the eagle, the vapor of grottoes and the leaves of the ash-tree, where you are; by means of the noise of the city, the watchman’s bagpipe, the chains of the drawbridge, the shining lance and funeral bells.
9.
One day, I thought I had arrived at the end of my road, at the house of Christ, to find him sitting under the porch with his mother; still the road went on, through the heather; still the streams lost their breath behind me; still my heart expected to encounter him, before nightfall, with his golden aureole, with his palm-leaf. But the evening passed; after the night, the morning passed, and after the morning, the midday too; and after that, there was a time when I saw that my worn feet, without aging, were wearing away the stone of the thresholds of my hosts; beneath their tread the stairways crumbled, their valley filled with dead leaves, their well was filled in, but my life was not filled in. In the evening, I sought a placed to rest, in cities that I had left full of people, cries, songs, smoke, carts and sighs; I found t
hem dried up on the road, like a spring from which jackals have drunk the last drops of water.
10.
And when new people came to replace the dead, I went before them, alone, to the city gates, to show them the way; their wild horses looked at my suspiciously; their long-haired kings shouted and laughed in their new tongues without ever having seen me. “Look on that stone! That’s Ahasuerus! Don’t draw your bows; it’s the man who will never die.”
11.
Not to be able to die! To wait forever, and never meet! That’s it, isn’t it? Always to gaze and never to see! Who said that? Is it you, long-haired kings on your wild horses? And do the stones of my path also know Christ’s secret? I threw myself off a peak in the Alps; an eagle extended its wings to carry me to verdant grass. I marched into the waves of a bottomless lake in order to plunge myself into the skies reflected there; the water fled before me, leaving nothing beneath my feet but stones that it had muddied and bones that it had rubbed together.
AHASUERUS’ HORSE
Master, I hear your plaint, but I can’t change anything. My hair, longer than a woman’s, makes my sweat rain down to the ground, a sweat of blood. In my mouth, the bit has worn away. One day, when I followed my sweetheart without you, I crossed the desert of the four rivers without wearying. But your dolor is wider than the desert of Asia and the sea of Macedonia; its borders have never been seen. Your cares are too heavy; the wound in our bosom is too heavy for me to carry; your injury pricks and spurs me too harshly. Your road stretches out beneath your paces, and no horseman has ever walked as far. The grass of your pasturage only grows in ruins. In my trough you put tears. Neither my feet nor my flanks can run any longer. If you love me, bury me in this place, beneath that leafy grass where the mares are gamboling. Braid my mane on my neck and leave me my colored coat, my stirrups and my ivory saddle too, and the worn remains of my silver bit. On my black litter, I shall dream about you. When I close my heavy eyelids, I shall weep for your pain, but not my own.
