We rose. "We are Christians," said Francis, crossing himself. "Christ sent us because he took pity on you, illustrious Sultan. He wants to save your soul."
"To save my soul!" exclaimed the Sultan, struggling to hold back his laughter. "And how is it to be saved, monk?"
"By means of perfect Poverty, perfect Love, perfect Chastity, Sultan, my lord."
The Sultan stared at him with protruding eyes. "Are you in your right mind?" he shouted. "What is this nonsense you're talking about, monk? Do you mean to say I should abandon my wealth, palaces, wives, and become a ragamuffin like yourself to knock on doors and beg? Do you mean I should never touch a woman? But then what would be the use of living--can you tell me that? Why did God give us a key which opens women and lets us in? In other words I should become a eunuch--is that what you want?"
"Women are--" began Francis, but the Sultan extended his hand angrily.
"Shut your mouth, monk. Don't say anything bad about women, or I'll have your tongue cut out! Think of your mother, think of your sister if you have one; and above all, you who are a Christian, think of Mary the mother of Christ!"
Francis bowed his head and did not reply.
"And tell me, if you please, what you mean by perfect love," said the Sultan, nodding to the executioner to approach.
"To love your enemies, Sultan, my lord."
"Love my enemies!" exclaimed the Sultan, bursting into laughter. He addressed the executioner:
"Sheathe the yataghan. They're insane, poor wretches, completely insane. We won't kill them."
Then he turned again to Francis. This time he spoke more tenderly, as though addressing someone who was ill. "This heaven of yours: what is it like? Let's see if it's worth my while to go."
"Our heaven is full of angels and the spirits of the saints, and God sits at the very top."
"And what does one eat and drink up there? Who does one go to bed with?"
"Do not blaspheme. The inhabitants of Paradise do not eat, drink, or couple. They are spirits."
The Sultan laughed once more. "Spirits? In other words: air--is that what you're saying? Our heaven is a thousand times better. Mountains of rice, rivers of milk and honey, and beautiful girls who never fail to become virgins again the moment after you've slept with them. I'd have to be insane, monk, to go to your heaven. . . . Leave me in peace."
Francis grew angry. Forgetting where he was and that the Sultan, with a nod, could deprive him of his head, he began fearlessly to preach Christ's Passion, Resurrection, the Second Coming, and also the Inferno, where all Moslems will burn forever and ever. So carried away was he in preaching the word of God, that he became drunk and began to clap his hands and dance, laugh, sing, whistle. Without a doubt he had gone out of his senses for the moment. Chuckling, the Sultan watched him, and then he too began to clap, whistle, and shout in order to encourage the enkindled monk to continue.
Francis suddenly stopped. The sweat was gushing from his steaming body.
"Bless you, monk," said the Sultan. "I haven't laughed for ages. But now be still, because it's my turn to speak to you. Our Prophet loved perfumes, women, flowers; in his belt he kept a small mirror, and a comb for combing his hair. He also loved beautiful clothes very very much. Your prophet, so I'm told, walked barefooted, unwashed, uncombed, and his robe was made of thousands of patches. It's said that every poor man he encountered gave him one patch. Is that true?"
"True! True! He took upon Himself the suffering of every poor man in the entire world," cried Francis, carried away.
The Sultan stroked his beard. Presently he removed a tiny mirror from his waistband, twisted his mustache, and reached for his long amber-tipped chibouk. A small boy knelt and lit it for him. The Sultan took several soothing puffs and then tranquilly closed his eyes.
"This is an excellent time for us to be killed, Brother Leo," whispered Francis, turning to me. "Are you ready? I hear the gates of heaven opening."
"Why be killed so soon, Brother Francis?" I replied. "Wait awhile." The Sultan opened his eyes. "Mohammed--great is his name!--was not only a prophet, he was also a man. He loved what men love, hated what men hate. That's why I bow down and worship him; that's why I struggle to resemble him. Your prophet was made of stone and air. I don't care for him at all."
He turned to me. "And what about you, monk: aren't you going to talk? Say something; let us hear your voice."
"I'm hungry!" I cried.
The Sultan laughed. He clapped his hands, and the two Negroes who had captured us came forward.
"Remove a pan from the oven and give them something to eat," he commanded. "Then take them away and let them go find their image-worshiping coreligionists. The poor wretches are insane, insane, and we ought to respect them."
The city was overrun by eastern troops. It reeked with the stench of the dead soldiers and disemboweled horses that lay unburied in the streets. Dervishes, dancing outside the mosques, slashed their heads with long knives until the blood ran down their white jelabs. In the cafes, chubby boys sang languorous Oriental songs, accompanying themselves on strange oblong instruments--tambouras. Women passed, veiled from head to toe, and for a moment the ill-smelling air was perfumed with musk.
Pinching our noses against the accursed stench, we followed the two Negroes rapidly through the narrow lanes until we came to the edge of the city. Here our guides halted and pointed toward a spot far in the distance, behind a low sand dune. "The Christians are there!" they growled, their brilliantly white teeth glistening in the sun. They gave us two strong punches in the back as a parting gesture and then retraced their steps at a run.
We set out, marching in silence. His lips bolted shut, Francis gazed at the ground, plunged in thought. As for me, I stared goggle-eyed all around me. The world seemed so unbelievably large! Here, thousands of miles from Assisi, countless souls lived in sin, never even having heard of the name of Christ. How were we going to be able to preach God's word to all these souls? Life was short; we would never have the time. With the world so limitless, where were we to begin?
The sand stretched out before us. Strange birds, red, with white bellies, passed overhead. At our backs was the tumult of the Moslem city, ahead of us, behind the sand dune, trumpets and the whinnying of horses. At last we were nearing the Christian host that for months and months had encircled the infidel city.
Suddenly Francis halted. "Brother Leo," he said to me, "when (and if) we return to our homeland, I am going to beg each poor man I meet to give me one patch to use for my robe. The Sultan was right."
"We had a narrow escape, Brother Francis."
"We lost one opportunity to enter Paradise," was his reply. By this time we had climbed to the top of the dune. Stretched out beneath us, multicolored and tumultuous, were the myriad forces of Christ.
I prefer not to remember those days, those months. The din still haunts my mind, making me giddy. And the filth, the brazen songs, the cursing we heard when we reached the plain where the crusaders had pitched their tents! Poor Francis had to block his ears. Was this, then, what the soldiers of Christ were like? They spoke of nothing but the looting they were going to do, the women they were going to enslave, the Saracens they were going to slaughter. The name of Christ never crossed their lips. It is impossible for me to remember how many weeks we remained with them. Every day Francis stepped up onto a stone and preached about the Holy Sepulcher and God's mercy. The crusaders went by, some not even bothering to turn and look, while others stopped, but only to laugh or to throw a handful of sand at him.
The battle recommenced. The Christians charged the battlements and towers, scaled them, vaulted into the city-- and the pillage and slaughter began! Francis ran among the soldiers of Christ and exhorted them with tearful eyes to be merciful, but they drove him away, jeered him, and continued to break down the doors of the houses. How can I ever forget the cries of the women and the groans of the men they slaughtered! The blood ran in rivers; wherever you turned you stumbled over a severed head.
The air was thick with moans and wailing.
The face of the sky had filled with smoke from the houses and human bodies that were burning. The heat was stifling, the earth seething. Christ's labarum fluttered above the Sultan's palace, but the Sultan himself had leapt onto a fast horse and managed to escape, leaving behind him his women and possessions. Francis knelt in the palace doorway and implored God to avert His eyes from Damietta so that He would not see what His soldiers were doing below on earth.
"Lord," he shouted, the tears streaming down his cheeks, "man becomes a beast amid the blood of war, a bloodthirsty beast. He loses the faces Thou gavest him and becomes a wolf, a filthy pig. Take pity on him, Lord; restore to him the face of man--Thy face!"
The old and infirm had been crowded into a mosque. Francis remained among them, uttering words of comfort. Disease had blinded many of them; blood and pus oozed from their eyes. Bending down, Francis placed his hands over their eyelids and besought God to heal them. "They too are men, Thy children," he murmured. "Have pity on them!" He blew on their eyes and whispered words of comfort and love--until finally one day he caught the disease himself and his eyes became inflamed and started to burn. His sight grew dim; he could no longer see well enough to walk, and I had to hold his hand and lead him.
One day I said to him: "I told you the disease would attack you if you went near them, Brother Francis!"
"You are extraordinarily prudent, Brother Leo," he answered me. "What you say is sensible, but to a fault. In other words, you still cannot take the leap, can you? Are you going to continue to walk on the ground forever?"
"What leap, Brother Francis?"
"The leap above your own head, into the air!"
No, I was unable to take this leap, nor would I be able to ever. I had taken only one leap in my life, and that was when I had decided to follow Francis. Another was too much for me. . . . Every time I think of this leap I rejoice that I took it, and yet at the same time I constantly regret it. Alas, I never was the type for sainthood. . . .
"The world is terribly large, Brother Leo," Francis said to me on another occasion. "Behind the Saracens are the Negroes, behind the Negroes the savage cannibal tribes, and behind them a limitless ocean, one that you can walk on because it is frozen. How will we ever succeed, ever have time to preach the good news everywhere, the news that Christ came to the world?"
"Do not fret, Brother Francis: Time itself will succeed; Time will have time for all."
"Time . . . Time . . ." murmured Francis. "But we won't be here."
"You'll be watching from up in heaven, Brother Francis; you'll be working, seated astride Time." Francis sighed. "Brother Leo," he said, "there was once an ascetic who died, mounted to heaven, and fell deep into God's embrace. He had found the perfect beatitude. One day, however, he leaned out so that he could see the earth below him, and when he did this, he spied a green leaf. 'Lord,' he cried, 'Lord, let me leave, let me touch the green leaf once again!' Do you understand, Brother Leo?"
His words frightened me, and I did not answer. Alas! it was true: the power of the green leaf was as great as that!
Summer went by; autumn arrived.
"When are we going to leave, Brother Francis?" I asked. "It's autumn; I'm anxious to return to the cradle where we were born. This is another world; perhaps there is even another God here. Come, let's go away."
"Brother Leo," he answered me, "when two roads lie before you and you want to choose, do you know which is the best, which is the one that leads to God?"
"No, Brother Francis. Tell me."
"The most difficult, the steepest. Our life here is hard; therefore, let's stay."
He went about all day preaching, but no one bothered to listen. The mind and thoughts of all were on the prospect of looting Jerusalem.
"And Christ, don't you think of Christ, my brothers?" Francis shouted in desperation. "It was to deliver His tomb that you journeyed from the ends of the earth; it was for His tomb, the Holy Sepulcher!"
But they had long ago begun to treat him as a laughingstock. They would drag him by his robe, throw stones at him, die laughing whenever he appeared on the streets ringing his ram's bell; and he in turn, overjoyed that he was being humiliated by men, would laugh along with them and commence to dance and preach in the middle of the streets.
"I am God's buffoon, men's buffoon. Come to laugh, my brothers, come to laugh!"
One day at noontime we lay down beneath the shelter of a doorway. The sun was out in full force; we were tired, and we quickly fell asleep. Suddenly, while I was sleeping, I heard Francis jump up and begin to shriek. When I opened my eyes I screamed as well, for two crusaders had laid a naked prostitute down at Francis' side in order to amuse themselves. The moment the brazen woman threw her arms around his neck he had sprung to his feet, quaking. Now the hussy was holding her arms out to him invitingly.
"Come, come," she cooed in a sweet voice. "Come, I am Paradise. Enter!"
Francis placed his hands over his eyes so that he would not see her. But suddenly his soul took pity on the woman.
"My sister," he said, "Sister Prostitute, why don't you want to save your soul? Do you feel no pity for it? And your body that has been surrendered to men for so many years: do you feel no pity for that? Allow me to place my hands upon your head and pray God to have mercy on you!"
"All right, place your hands on my head and start your incantation," she said amid paroxysms of laughter. "Call your God to come down and perform his miracle."
Francis placed his palms on the black unbraided hair, and raised his eyes to heaven. "Christ," he whispered, "Thou who descendest to the world for the poor, for sinners, for prostitutes, take pity on this woman, this naked woman. Her heart, deep within her, is good, but she has chosen the evil road. Extend Thy hand and guide her to the path of salvation."
The woman had shut her eyes. Little by little her face began to sweeten: surely she must have felt Francis' holiness descend from his hands into her brain, and thence to her heart, her bowels, her very heels. Suddenly, abruptly, she began to weep. Francis drew his hands away and traced the sign of the cross above her naked body.
"Do not weep, my sister," he said to her. "God is good; He forgives. Remember what He said to the prostitute when He was here on earth: 'Your sins are forgiven, for you have loved much.' "
The two soldiers had been standing off to one side all the while, guffawing. Now they began to whistle at the woman and taunt her. But she quickly gathered up her garment from the ground, wrapped it tightly around her body, and fell at Francis' feet.
"Forgive me, for I have sinned," she cried. "Don't you have a convent for me somewhere? Take me with you!"
"My sister, the whole world is a convent. You can live chastely in the world as well as out of it. Go, lock yourself in your house and have no fears. The Lord is with you!"
Winter bore down upon us. The army broke camp and departed for Jerusalem. Scattered clouds were visible in the sky. Flocks of crows followed God's host by day, packs of hyenas by night, and we ran behind as well. I held Francis by the hand: his eyes had grown smaller and smaller until they were but two narrow violently inflamed slits. A mist had settled over them, and the world had become dark.
On the morning of the third day he collapsed to the ground, gasping for breath.
"I can't continue, Brother Leo. I want to go right to the limit, but I can't. . . . Look!"
He showed me his feet. Blood was flowing from them, and also a yellow fluid.
He sighed. "And as though these wounds weren't enough, Brother Leo, new devils have entered me!"
I dared not question him. I had a premonition which these new devils might be, and I held my tongue.
We were surrounded by endless sand. The army had disappeared. At the edge of the desert the clouds had thickened and the sun grown dim. The sea was to our left, glittering in the distance. Bending down, I raised Francis onto my shoulders--he had fainted--and began to stagger with panting breaths toward the sea. It was midd
ay when we finally reached the coast. A boat with a black cross painted on the stern had cast anchor, its becalmed sails hanging limp and useless. Two or three fishermen were drawing their nets onto the shore; there were a few huts built of cow dung or bricks and straw; and beyond, blue-green, the limitless sea. I laid Francis down on the beach and sprinkled him with sea water. He raised his eyelids.
"The sea?" he asked longingly. "The sea?"
"Yes, Brother Francis, the sea. We're going home."
He did not speak, did not object. Leaving him, I ran near the boat and called for the captain. As soon as he came I fell at his feet and implored him, hugging his knees:
"If you're returning to our country take us with you! We have nothing to pay our fare with, but God shall repay you."
"When?"
"In the next world, the real world."
Saint Francis Page 24
