by Gerald Kersh
‘Bandits?’
‘That countryside is a terrible place for all kinds of outlaws. Why doesn’t Rome stamp them out, you may ask? Try getting the lice out of a beggar’s rags.’
‘But why is it called Benaiah’s Pass?’ Paulus asked. ‘And what worm, Afranius?’
Trust a damned Pharisee, Afranius wrote, to be versed in everything but simple old stories such as might interest the likes of us!
But he talked on, and I wish I might have been there to hear him. When Solomon drew the plans for the great Temple in Jerusalem, he vowed that no war-like metal should touch the stones of Jehovah’s peaceful dwelling-place. Thus the problem arose: how to quarry the stone and hew it? Without the use of metal, it was said, this was impossible. However, Solomon knew that somewhere in Creation existed a certain worm called the Shamir, which had the miraculous property of splitting the hardest rock at a touch. No man knew where this worm was hidden. No man; but Solomon was possessed of a certain Seal, upon which was engraved the Unpronounceable Name of God, and this Seal gave him power over all the demons of earth, air and water.
So, alone in his chamber, with the aid of the Seal, Solomon summoned Beelzebub, who is the demon in charge of all insects, and one of the most powerful of all the Princes of the Air. ‘Bring me the Shamir Worm,’ Solomon commanded. But Beelzebub said: ‘Master, I cannot. Only Ashmodai, the King of all the demons, knows where the Shamir is hidden.’ Solomon then told Beelzebub to fetch Ashmodai, but not even the dread of the Seal could make Beelzebub do this. ‘Ashmodai,’ he said, ‘will come for Solomon when Solomon’s time has come. Meanwhile, Solomon must go to Ashmodai.’
With this cryptic remark, Beelzebub vanished, and Solomon sat deep in thought. But nothing could for long baffle that tremendous mind. Soon, he sent for the renowned Benaiah, Captain of the Guard, a mighty warrior who had killed a lioness with his bare hands, like Samson, and had also caught by the feet a flying gryphon with which he wrestled for a day and a night – he would have brought it home too, only the Sabbath commenced and so he had to let it go. To Benaiah, Solomon gave exact instructions, and so he rode off, taking with him a pack-horse carrying a bale of the best sponges and twenty skins of the strongest sweet wine.
So Benaiah made his laborious way to the Dark Mountain, many months’ journey away, and an account of this expedition alone and of the strange monsters he encountered and overcame would fill a book; but nothing could harm him for he carried about his neck the Seal of Solomon. He climbed the Dark Mountain, and found at the summit, as Solomon had told him, a well of pure water – for Ashmodai, who went about his business by night, sick and disgusted by the muck of the world, always paused at the top of the Dark Mountain on his way back to the peace and quiet of Hell, and cleansed his mouth with that pure water one hour before dawn.
Ashmodai took the sponges, and with them took all the water from the well and squeezed it away. Then he refilled the well with the strong sweet wine, and lay down behind a rock and waited. Punctually, one hour before dawn, Ashmodai came out of the night on his huge bat-wings, with the bad taste of Man in his mouth, and threw himself down at the well and drank until the well was empty. Then – for Solomon’s fortified wine was strong as the devil – he found himself overcome with a desire to sleep. He lay back, and slept, therefore. Now Benaiah came out of hiding, and bound Ashmodai hand and foot, and sealed the knots with Solomon’s Seal.
When Ashmodai awoke, his wrath was terrible, but with all his power, that Seal even he could not break. Thus, he agreed to accompany Benaiah back to Solomon in Jerusalem; and the wonders he showed his captor on the way, by themselves would fill another book … Afranius had many hours to kill …
But when Solomon demanded the Shamir Worm of Ashmodai, the King of the demons laughed. ‘Oh Solomon,’ he said, ‘not even your wit and magic will get you the Shamir Worm. For it was not created, as other creatures were. When your God had finished what you call the Universe, and before he rested on the seventh day, he found himself with a crumb of Original Matter left. For some reason best known to himself – for even I cannot fathom all of your God’s motives – he did not take this Something back, but left it on earth in charge of the thing called the Shamir Bird, which God made of little fragments of other living creatures. This Bird is neither male nor female. It has the wings of an eagle and the head of a fox, and out of the middle of its belly grows one little hand without nails. Under its left wing is a pouch, and in this pouch your God hid the Shamir Worm.’
‘Where does this Bird live, Ashmodai, and what are its habits?’ Solomon asked.
‘It lives in a nest in the Lonesome Tree, on the Twilight Shore that is by the Silent Sea. But between it and all creation is a thin wall of Nothing, so that neither man nor demon may touch the Shamir Bird. It was created with an unfledged young one, which may never grow older and must always be hungry; so the Shamir Bird leaves its nest at dawn and returns at dusk with food, for such is its doom. And always, obedient to your God’s ineluctable command, the Shamir Bird carries the Worm in its pouch. You ask in vain, Solomon, for the Shamir Worm! Not even your Seal may break the skin of Nothing!’
So saying, Ashmodai took his leave, and Solomon sat in thought again until, as usual, everything suddenly became clear to him. He called Benaiah again, and this time, having told him what he was to do, he gave him a thick leaden box lined with lamb’s-wool and a plate of pure rock crystal.
And the bold Benaiah went away, and travelled many weary months until, at last, he came to the awful Silent Sea that surrounds the world; and there was the Twilight Shore that is between Here and Hereafter, and growing on the Twilight Shore was the melancholy Lonesome Tree that is set apart from all other trees; and in its uppermost branches rested the Shamir’s Nest, brooded over by the untouchable Shamir, and inhabited by the Shamir’s nestling which is always hungry but never satisfied, and damned to eternal infancy.
Now Benaiah hid in the sand until dawn, when the Shamir Bird flew away for food to feed its nestling, and then, always obedient to his master’s orders, climbed the Lonesome Tree and covered the Shamir’s Nest with the plate of rock crystal; and after that he lay and waited. Exactly at dusk the Shamir Bird returned, carrying in its mouth the entrails of a goat. It flew directly to the nest, but encountered a mysterious transparent obstacle, at which it flapped and scratched and beat in vain. It could not penetrate the rock crystal, and the cries of its nestling were becoming more and more piteous.
At last, in desperation, the Shamir Bird put its little hand into the sacred pouch under its left wing, and took out the Shamir Worm which glowed in the dark. It touched the crystal with the Worm. The crystal flew to pieces. But before the Shamir Bird could put the Worm back in its pouch, Benaiah leapt up with a yell that could be heard fifty miles away, at the same time making a terrible clangour with his helmet against his shield.
The Shamir Bird, startled, dropped the Shamir Worm. Benaiah caught it as it fell, and put it into the leaden box lined with lamb’s-wool, and hurried away.
He was in great haste. Between Damascus and Jerusalem, in those days, there stood a mountain. Benaiah took out the Shamir Worm and touched the rock; the mountain fell apart with a thunderclap, and broke into huge boulders that lined a path, through which Benaiah passed in triumph to Jerusalem. So Solomon built the Temple without using metal tools; and so the darkest pass between Jerusalem and Damascus is known to this day as Benaiah’s Pass, or the Pass of Solomon’s Worm.
The Shamir Worm, its work accomplished, grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared without a trace. The Bird was so horrified that it turned to stone – its outlines may still be seen in certain places, a skeletal thing with great wings, long jaws bristling with teeth, and a look of hopeless anguish on its petrified face.
Afranius now complained to me that if Paulus had heard this story in company – at Soxias’s house in Tarsus, for example – he would have made a convincing show of enjoying it; might have capped it, even, with another, stranger one. But
there among the rocks and the firelight, they being encamped for the night, Paulus treated poor Afranius to what he described as ‘the most damnable Rabbinical commentary that ever if-ed and but-ed the zest out of an easy, digestive, after-dinner story …’
First, Paulus disapproved of the symbolism of the Worm, evidently intended to signify the Fundamental All-Powerful Energy of God of which some minute particle obviously had been left in Solomon’s trust to discover for himself by the proper application of those qualities with which the Almighty had seen fit to endow him. But the vulgar had always a woeful tendency to make allegories, using worms and other creatures of earth, air, or water; and an allegory was a mental image which was as bad as a graven image, if not worse. Begin by thinking worms and you’ll end by carving worms, and making sacrifices to worms and praying to worms. For the ignorant could not conceive of Energy without Shape: feeling the invisible but powerful wind, they had to take mud and make an image of a boy with puffed-out cheeks … and so on, and so forth. Hence, such tales might easily lead to atrocious practices, and should be banned.
Secondly, it was not on official record that Solomon was a Keeper of the Name which, as far as he, Paulus, knew, had been divulged only to Abraham and to Joshua. But perhaps Solomon had received a Seal with this Name engraved upon it; it was, however, nowhere written authentically that Solomon had ever dared to pronounce this Unsayable Name, by one repetition of which the sun could be made to stand still in the heavens.
And, thirdly, concerning the cutting of stone without the use of metal: did not the Chinese carve the hardest of stones, which is jade, by the use of a string and wet sand?
Hence, fourthly, and fifthly, and sixthly, up to tenthly – whereat Afranius, suppressing a desire to strike him on the head with a large stone, stopped him short by saying, with calculated casualness: ‘Touching the matter of God’s Name – people say that this so-called King Jesus was a Master of it. Thus, he made men rise from the dead, and worked other miracles.’
‘Do you believe that, Afranius?’ Paulus asked, with his lip curled.
Determined, now, to have the last word, Afranius said: ‘In the world there are so many wonders that it is almost impossible in the long run to invent a complete untruth. So I have learned to believe everything, and in the long run the odds are on my side. Yes, then; I believe that Jesus raised the dead, healed lepers and made the blind to see. Why not?’
‘You would believe a false witness, then?’
‘How am I to know that he is a false witness?’ cried Afranius, enjoying himself now. ‘Who am I to discriminate between what is and what is not? Who are you? Can you prove to me that Afranius is Afranius, and not a figment of your fevered imagination, a phantasm, a dream? Can you prove that in an instant I may not disappear altogether, with this fire and this desert, and all the company – yourself included – and that you will not wake up somewhere else? What more real than a dream? Prove to me that Paulus is not a dream of Jesus himself, and that when I clap my hands you may not wake out of a second of tortured unconsciousness and find yourself hanging by the hands while your life drips away!’
‘What need to prove that Paulus is Paulus?’ he asked, grimacing at the image evoked.
‘Because I say you are not Paulus,’ said Afranius, winking to himself. ‘I say that we are in Jerusalem, on the hill at Golgotha. What I hear is not the snorting of the horses, but the growling of a mob. What I smell is not smoke and dung, but the stink of that mob. I shut my eyes for a moment, sick to the heart. Thud! – thud! – thud! – that was not a horse stamping, it was the mallet driving home the nails. But I like to think that I am elsewhere, in the desert under the stars. And when I open my eyes I shall see Paulus’s bloody feet two yards off the ground; and he will see me turn away in pity and disgust –’
‘Enough, Afranius, enough!’ cried Paulus.
‘But can you prove to me by argument or demonstration that I am wrong? Strike me – I only dream of being struck, I say. Produce Logic – I say that Reason itself is nothing but a dream within a dream. Tell me I know that Paulus is Paulus – I reply: “This knowledge is part of my dream; it is because I dream Paulus that Paulus seems so real.”’
‘There is no argument concerning a fact,’ said Paulus, dismissing the matter.
‘I agree,’ said Afranius, obligingly, ‘because everything is fact, you see.’
‘The night is long,’ said Paulus, sighing.
In the Jewish fashion, Afranius said with a shrug: ‘Why shouldn’t the night be long? Haven’t the owls a right to live?’
‘The road is long.’
‘It would be longer if there were no road at all,’ said Afranius.
‘I mean, time runs away,’ said Paulus, ‘and we stand still.’
‘That, my friend, is just where you’re wrong,’ said Afranius, who was not going to let him off lightly. ‘Time stands perfectly still. Only you run away. Time is the same kind of thing as Height, Breadth, and Depth: immutable. Only you move – Distance is always here, and Time is a kind of Distance. That’s how Jesus brought the man back from the dead, you know.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Why, so far as that dead man was concerned, he put the calendar back a week; so the man, finding he wasn’t dead yet, got up, maggots and all. That was how Solomon seemed to be in two places at once: say he was in Jerusalem and wanted to be at Tarsus – all he had to do was, visualise the distance as it were on a long string, pick Tarsus up in his left hand and Jerusalem in his right, let go the Jerusalem end and there he was in Tarsus. That is the way demons fly.’
‘Who told you that?’
‘The Shamir Bird’s Nestling. Now go to sleep. We’ll be in Jerusalem tomorrow evening.’
‘Sleep well, dear Afranius,’ said Paulus, with his charming smile.
Afranius slept until just before dawn, and when he awoke Paulus was still sitting exactly as he had been sitting when Afranius closed his eyes; hugging his knees, his head on his bosom – ‘abortion-shaped’, as my friend described the posture.
‘Have you not slept?’ Afranius asked.
Paulus shook himself, and raised his head. ‘Eh?’
‘I asked, have you not slept?’
‘I don’t know. I believe so. I must have.’
Paulus stepped aside to say his prayers, and Afranius commented: ‘… He prays in such a manner that one feels his God will give him anything he begs for, just to be rid of him. He bows and straightens himself in a painfully spasmodic kind of way – as if he has not seen the horizon for months, and has just caught her leaning across a table. There is something avid and rapacious about a Jew at prayer….’ Afranius concluded the first part of this long letter as follows:
‘… I am at present the guest of my cousin Quintus, and have had a bath, but even so I am always aware of the stercoraceous exhalations of this feculent city. Paulus has vanished for the time being in a susurration of officialdom among rustling rabbis in some sombre sanhedrinal whispering-gallery. The thought occurs to me: if I were a King of Judaea (which the gods forbid) and Paulus were anywhere close to my throne, I should find myself afflicted with a chronic tension of the nerves, which could be relieved only by an outburst of weeping at Paulus’s funeral…. You have had the prickly heat, Diomed? Paulus is the prickly cold …’ And here, my kind Afranius dropped all effort at bright and pleasing correspondence.
‘A kind of fatal numbness has taken hold of me,’ he wrote, beginning the second part of his letter. ‘As in some uneasy dream, I am detached yet involved; I watch and play at the same time. I am drawn into the deep mud of this affair, joint by joint. Damn you, Diomed – I lent you a hand and you have snatched an arm! No, no, I beg pardon, old friend; I would not come back if you called me, now, for I must see how this matter ends … if it has an end. As with biting your nails, this business grows while you nibble at it; one ragged edge gives place to another; and while you well know that soon comes the bitten quick, and ugliness with blood and pain, still you gna
w away at yourself, engrossed.
‘I could honourably plead indisposition, having contracted one of the famous Jerusalem bilious colics, for the water is so putrid that one takes one’s life in one’s hands even in rinsing the mouth with it. The people of Jerusalem wash with words rather than water: let a Jew come brown-handed from the jakes with phlegm in his beard, so long as he trickles a thread of water over his fingertips and says the right prayers, he is ritually clean to shove his fist in the family platter; let a Jewess scratch herself in the armpits, wipe away sweat, a dead flea and wet hair against breasts which smell like an unscoured butter-tub before smearing the blow-flies off a honey-cake, and that cake is a clean cake if it is a Jewish cake …
‘But this is not to teach my grandmother to suck eggs. I am here to tell Diomed of a certain inflamed condition of affairs of which Paulus is the hot centre. Things do not happen to Paulus, Paulus happens to things: let us put it like that. He is a fever. Certain people avoid him for fear of catching him. This swarthy little fellow slups up life like a savage starved of salt.
‘He makes a meal of appetisers, as it were. Let him swell, let him thirst, let him burst: he will still call for stronger spices and something different to drink. He will go mad like a lost sailor trying to drink the sea. Everything he devours is an impatient preliminary, a taster to sting and stimulate. Stimulate what? Stimulation. He teases hunger, but for him there may be no easy repletion, no satisfaction of solid food.
‘There can never be any peace in life or death for this awful little man. His eyes are bigger than his belly and, as they say in Aramaic: “He will die with his hands clenched” – his wiry, worrying, fidgety, hairy hands that know no hold between the death-grip and the death. He was created to penetrate. (Perhaps this is why women find him beautiful, while men fear him? Because, when all is said and done, a woman is nothing but a hole: the heart and soul of a woman is in the orifice between that double-talking mouth with four lips, and when this dries, the woman ceases to be anything but a mess of lying memories – but, wet or dry, there she is, and the thighs of her spirit are ninety degrees separated.) Paulus was hammered by the gods to pierce membranes and draw blood…. I speak, as I must, only in figures.
