Ahasuerus

by Edgar Quinet

  XIX.

  Three raps are heard at the cathedral door.

  THE CATHEDRAL

  Who’s knocking at the door?

  MOB

  An old acquaintance. Open up.

  THE CATHEDRAL

  Your name?

  MOB

  Mob.

  (The doors of the cathedral open, turning on their hinges of their own accord.

  Mob enters, giving her arm to Ahasuerus and her hand to Rachel.)

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  Behold our queen! Salutations to our queen! Let us bow down, if we can, to the ground, and strew our ashes beneath her feet with our own hands. Her horse is slaking its thirst under the porch from the baptismal font of porphyry. She is laughing sardonically while leaning on the arms of hr two companions. She has attached a new bouquet of scabious to her robe. But never has her horse been so pale beneath the porch; never has her own face been so white; never have the soles of her feet clicked so loudly on the flag-stones. How is the fête going to end?

  MOB, to Ahasuerus

  We’ve arrived a little belatedly, as you can see. The company is brilliant and numerous. Let’s mingle with the crowd, my handsome lord, and return the salutes of those who salute us. Come on, Rachel, my arm is weary of dragging you. (She advances toward a circle of the dead.) Bonjour, Queen Berthe! Bonjour, Yseult the Blonde, my beautiful queen of love! My God, what’s happened to you since the day when I attached your crown to your head? Wrap yourself up in your incarnadine Spanish mantlet, my dear! If your Cornish lover could see you now! What have you done with the golden tresses smoothed over your temples, which went so well with your long gaze, your rosy complexion, your bracelets and gauntlets? Go and see whether you haven’t left them in the bottom of your cassolette at vespers...

  Your servant, my Holy Father the Pope. Your sanctity recognizes me, I hope. I’m the one who carried the golden miter, with my herald’s sash, limping, on the stairs of the conclave. If your papal head isn’t too unsteady, come and open the dance with me; your indulgences don’t dispense you of that. I’ll whistle my old tune between my teeth, which I learned from the wind in the crevices of your Italian towers...

  You too, my noble King Robert!25 So naked, so white with age so bearded! Who cut your hazel-wood scepter in the Black Forest, if not me? Who carved the throne of quince-wood in your court, with the blade of her ax, if not me? Now the hazel-tree has been pruned, the quince-trees has shaken off its nightingales’ nests. Reign, my noble vassal, eyes hollow, head empty, in my nameless barony, devoid of banner and drawbridge, which I have enfeoffed to you eternally.

  But if you love me, my lords, don’t bump into the pommel of my cavalier’s sword, I beg you. Just think—what if you were to fall into dust? How would I be able to say, while throwing a handful of your dust into the face of the Lord, without mistaking either the century of the climate: “Lord, this powder in my hand is the army of Attila, or Alexander the Great; this is thirty centuries of kings of Syria and Chaldea; this is Rome, with its emperors and popes; this is a thousand years of the real of Brittany, with its peers, with its squires, who tarnish as they fall the golden clasps of your shoes, as one of your footsteps does when you walk out of the gate of your eternal city.”

  AHASUERUS

  Oh, my good lords, tell me, for pity’s sake, whether one of you has heard Christ passing over your paving-stones with his cross.

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  No, no, we haven’t heard him.

  AHASUERUS

  Tell me, oh, honestly, whether you have seen Jesus of Nazareth, with eyes ablaze, through the spiders’ webs that veil your eyelids.

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  No, no, we haven’t seen him.

  AHASUERUS

  Tell me, my good lords, I beg you, whether he has asked you where a traveler from the Holy Land has passed by.

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  No, no, he hasn’t asked us anything; we’re the ones who’ve sought him without finding him. Don’t you know him? There is no Christ, nor Jesus of Nazareth. Go on, go away, if you please, to mock the living. Neither the cricket nor the worm has announced to us for today the coming of a traveler or a guest from the Holy Land. Our table is full. Go elsewhere, further on, further on, all the way to oblivion.

  AHASUERUS

  Repeat what you have said, and when you have said it, repeat it again. Have your mouths not opened once to say: “There is no Christ?” Have your tongues not loosened once to say: “There is no Jesus of Nazareth?” Oh, if I lie, my lords, if my ears lie, if my eyes lie, only give me a sign. Am I blaspheming? Forgive me; I’m a poor traveler who has no thought of insulting his hosts.

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  Believe us if you wish; but Christ is not resuscitated; he is no longer with us; once again, passers-by, leave us be; there is no Christ.

  AHASUERUS

  And no more Hell for me, not so, my lords? No more path of mourning that my feet, like a weaver, ravel and unravel endlessly around his realm. Did you hear, Rachel? Shake away with your breath the centuries amassed on my hair, like the dew from a new almond-branch. My day of celebration has arrived. Let’s go, let’s attach our iron spurs to our feet. Let’s saddle our black horses. Now, I shall be the good messenger, from city to city.

  Leaning over my saddle-bow, I shall say to the grass of Arabia: “Withered grass, why have you dried out underfoot? gather your spring foliage around you once again, and your joyful colors;” to the stream of Palestine: “Why have you dried up? bring back the spring to your bed, and your robe of foam to your bank;” to the mountains of Judea and the summit of Golgotha: “Why have you rent yourselves to the rock? why have you sown brambles, hyssop and eternal dolor on your flanks? bring back your vines and gather your grapes on your hills;” to the Orient: “Why have you burned your face under the sun? why have you uprooted your fields? why have you donned a tunic of ashes in your ruins? bathe yourself again in the dew of the first day of the world, and sit down, laughing, at your door, that the sun might gild your hair again. Do you not know the news that my horse brings, when he strikes your threshold so swiftly with his hooves?”

  I shall say to Rome, on passing over its roads: “Beauty! Beauty! why do you weep and cry evening and morn? Caesar! Caesar! why do you go down the steps, every year, into your catacombs, like a young woman going into a cellar, bending her head, in search of a cup of foaming wine for her guest? go back up your stairs; go up to your highest window to see the joyous messenger pass by who is no longer thirsty for wine or spring-water.”

  To the cathedrals, to the churches and chapels of Germany and Brabant, I shall say: “Hola! why are you veiled, from tower to toe, in black lace, crepes of granite and widows’ mantles? bring out your virgins’ clothes from your trunks, your steeples the color of marble and your gilded turrets; do you not know that you have neither been betrothed nor married, and that you spent your wedding night standing at the crossroads waiting a thousand years for your espousal, in the rain.”

  To everything that my eyes behold I shall say: “Why are you sad? mown grass, spring rain, falling star, trembling leaf, thick cloud, moaning wind, howling bell, don’t you know that there is no Christ? have you not heard? There is no Jesus of Nazareth; there is no Lord of the Last Judgment; no more mourning, he is not dead; no more fear, he is not alive; rejoice in the ear of wheat, the radiance of the stars, the drop of dew, the crown of the tree, as you did in the first day of the world, before having learned his name.”

  RACHEL

  Joseph! Say, if you will, that heaven is here, and I will believe it; say too that these cold stones are the carpet of the light of the firmament, and I will believe it; but don’t say that it’s necessary to rejoice.

  AHASUERUS

  Come on, my love, leave your Lord there; what use is he to you? Your eyes are bluer than his tunic; our gaze shines brighter than his aureole.

  RACHEL

  Don’t believe the chorus of the dead. Their voices are so
cold when they speak; one doesn’t know whether they’re mocking or complaining. Their hearts aren’t beating in their breasts. When they look at you, it seems that nothing about you interests them, and that you’re dead, like them. Don’t believe them; they’re mistaken, I’m sure, and you’ll lose your soul. Come, let’s go back to Worms; I’ll sing my songs that please you the most; I’ll wait for you all day by my window; oh, you’ll be happy—you’ll see!

  AHASUERUS

  I am now, my love. Let’s go wherever you wish; my chain is broken.

  RACHEL

  Every word from your mouth breaks my heart. What have you done that you should be so afraid of Christ?

  AHASUERUS

  Nothing, nothing, I swear to you: one of those slight sins that one commits in the morning and has forgotten by nightfall.

  RACHEL

  Your eyes are burning me. God! What have you done? Tell me.

  AHASUERUS

  Once again, almost nothing, my child; don’t think about it anymore. Where is the man who can say to his life, when it is full: there is not one drop too many in your cup?

  RACHEL

  Your lips are pale. It seems that they are saying one thing and your heart another. Have you been cursed? Admit it: tell me. I’ll embrace your feet.

  AHASUERUS

  My love, is there a man who hasn’t been cursed, at least once, before birth? cursed in his heart, or cursed in his head? cursed on his doorstep or cursed on his bench? cursed in his love, or cursed in his hatred? cursed in his desire or cursed in his regret? Is there a flower on its stem that hasn’t been cursed, before blooming, by a passer-by? a bramble by a ram? an oar by the sea? a bridle by a mare? a bank by a river? a star by the sky? Cursed? Is there, tell me, an ear of wheat that hasn’t been by the wind? a burrow by an eagle? a path by a traveler? a threshold by the north wind? a roof by the rain? a pebble by a torrent? What does the curse of a pebble in the sand, the threshold, the burrow, the ear of wheat in the field, mean now, since there’s no Lord any more to judge? Don’t worry about it, any more than they do, my love.

  RACHEL

  But my God, if there’s no Christ, who’ll bless us? Who’ll marry us? Who’ll save us?

  MOB, to Rachel

  Don’t worry about that either. The blessing is always facile; heaven makes of it thereafter what it will. We have no lack of bishops or cardinals, and Pope Gregory has already put his triple crown on his head; he’s waiting for you at the main altar. Aren’t you, my lord?

  POPE GREGORY

  I am indeed. Have your two fiancés approach. It’s you who shall hold the linen stole over them. Now, let them tell me their names.

  RACHEL

  Rachel.

  POPE GREGORY, to Ahasuerus

  And you?

  AHASUERUS

  My name? I can’t say it. My tongue can’t pronounce it.

  (The dead form a great circle around Ahasuerus, holding hands.)

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  Your name? Your name? So that everyone can see him, let’s turn our circle around him, like a water-snake swaying in a meadow spring. Look how pale he is! His head seems bowed down by an invisible weight. What’s the matter?

  A KING

  He’s a king who has left his crown in his tent.

  A BISHOP

  He’s a false god who has lost his heaven.

  A SOLDIER

  He’s a good squire whose enchanted shield has been stolen,

  THE CATHEDRAL, to Ahasuerus

  Your name, so that I can hurl it to the passing cloud.

  AHASUERUS

  I lack the breath to say it.

  MOB

  What does a name matter to all of you, my lords? You’ve collected enough of those leaves from my tree; you’ve trampled enough of them marching through my forests. What would you do with one name more?

  POPE GREGORY, to Ahasuerus

  I consent to that. Only tell me where you come from?

  CHORUS OF THE DEAD

  Yes, where do you come from? Who are you? He isn’t answering, or the windows, shivering, are drowning out his murmur. Once again: who are you? Speak louder, if you speak.

  CHRIST, on one of the stained-glass windows

  He’s Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew; and I’m the Christ, for whom you’ve searched in your tombs. All night, I’ve seen you through the windows of my church. Go back under your tombstones until the day of the Last Judgment.

  SAINT MARK, on one of the windows

  Lord, I beg you, don’t say another word; your voice has already caused a section of my crystal tunic to fall out of my window. The dead have gone up in smoke like a grain of incense burned by a child in the nave; the cathedral is bounding like a horse under the spur; Ahasuerus has fallen down the steps of the main altar, and the demons carved on the pillars have come down from their columns to tear the young bride with lashes.

  THE VOICES OF THE DEAD, vanishing

  Be accursed, Ahasuerus!

  THE CATHEDRAL

  Be accursed, Ahasuerus!

  RACHEL

  Be blessed, Ahasuerus. Have mercy on him, Lord; open your Heaven to him. (The demons whip her with thongs of flame.) Are their angels on watch at the gate of Paradise? Angels, angels, open the gate for me; there will also be a place for Ahasuerus, will there not? Oh, how your swords blaze! Oh, how heavy your bolts are! Come on, come on, Ahasuerus; the stars of Paradise are rising on the other side of the threshold.

  MOB

  Poor fool! It’s the dawn beginning to break. Don’t be afraid, I’ll envelop you with the night of my royal wings. Come on; the door is creaking on its hinges. Let’s go. Our horse will trample your Ahasuerus on the paving-stones as it passes by.

  THE CATHEDRAL

  And you, my colored saints, my virgins in your stone niches, my dragons incrusted in my pillars; come on, shout, sing, howl, in the arcade of the vault, in the stalls of the nave, in the dust of the crypt, in the hollows of the bells; hurl this story loudly, during the night, with my voice, over the spring cloud, over the hawk’s wing, over the pine-tree’s branch, over the sleeping baron’s bed-head, over the crest of the cavalier delayed in the mist, over the watchman’s trumpet, over the foam of the Rhine.

  INTERLUDE OF THE THIRD DAY

  THE CHORUS

  1.

  Since the sun has been shining upon my head, I’ve seen more than one church. I’ve seen San Marco with its five cupolas like the inflated sails of a ship coming back from Palestine, in the port of Venice; I’ve seen the dome of Cologne emerging from the Rhine like a water-flower that puts forth new foliage every century. I’ve seen in the land of Andalusia, where the citrus trees grow, cathedrals for my lord like a white linen mantle suspended from a nail in his hostelry. I’ve seen your nave, little chapel of Brou, like wooden clasp carved by Alpine shepherds for the shepherd of Heaven.

  2.

  In France, in Germany, and in the lands from which the citrus fruits come, when a church is finished, when the workmen have departed with their wages, the master who has built it hollows out a jasper niche in a corner. From there, he watches over his work night and day; until Eternity, he watches to see what it lacks. And if, by chance, one evening, the March wind, or the hail, or the rain, or the snow, or a passing soldier, or some spirit resuscitated from his tomb, breaks a tile, tarnishes a stain-glass window or brushes a rose-window, he comes down from his place in order to repair, with his stone trowel, the crumbling colonnette or the tottering window.

  3.

  And you, poet, already your roof is crumbling, your colonnette shaking, the hinges of your door are worn down; and nowhere do I find you beneath the broken arches of your words. More than one section is missing from your work; already the goats are gnawing the clay pillars of your prose as they pass. Your voice has dried up on my lips; I have expended the last wave emerging from your spring on my bank. I have repeated the last line that you taught me. Mouth closed, within an hour, if you do not come, it will be necessary for me to re
tire from your resonant ruin with the brambles. In its chaos, everything is confused. The cedar grows there without bowing down. Where are you, then, blade of grass?

  THE POET

  Here I am.

  THE CHORUS

  In which direction?

  THE POET

  From the nave of Brou,26 where Marguerite of Savoy sleeps in her marriage bed on her mattress of fine stone, without ever any longer turning her head toward her husband lying by her side, a path leads into the forest. In the forest, if you go into it, the snakes of my undergrowth will go as far as the crossroads to meet you. The herons will wait for you on the edges of ponds. My wild mares will lift up heir streaming tresses from the marsh to see who is passing by, and the wild boar digging in my field will say from afar: “Let’s go; it’s our master who is coming.” In the distance, nearby, the earth is bare, as worn as a mendicant’s mantle, with neither salt nor dew; and at the hour when the sun carries its blond wheatsheaf into the wood of Dombes, on its shoulder, the fever is as cold there in summer as it is in Maremme. Beneath a flowering cherry you will find my roof, which shelters many dolors. On the doorstep my mother is reading Luther’s Bible; my sister, whom I love, has gone to pick ripe mulberries from the bushes for her child. My house is small, my bed is hard and often soaked in tears. There is room at my table for a stray traveler and for a robin prevented by the Christmas frost from gleaning in the clearing.