The Implacable Hunter

by Gerald Kersh

  And here was Paulus with his ‘ingenious’!

  ‘Solomon should have thought of it,’ said Paulus.

  ‘He was too busy plagiarising his Song from the old Assyrian,’ said Afranius, ‘when he was not compiling platitudes which you call Proverbs.’

  ‘The radiations in the concentricities,’ Paulus mused. ‘He might have conquered the world!’

  ‘It takes tolerance to conquer a world,’ Afranius said. ‘Alexander was tolerant. But you know what happens to a tolerant Jew, don’t you?’

  ‘A wise ruler knows how and when to be lenient.’

  ‘Are you tired?’ Afranius asked, after a while.

  ‘Tired? No, why should I be tired?’

  ‘You are not looking well. Another day or two of rest would have done you no harm.’

  ‘Who knows? On the Lord’s business, who dares to rest?’

  ‘Oh, God himself took a day off, I hear. Calm, calm, there will still be Nazarenes in Damascus for you to play with.’

  ‘What do I know?’ Paulus passed a hand over his eyes.

  ‘A headache?’

  ‘No, a noise, a noise not unlike a swarm of bees.’

  ‘The flies, perhaps.’

  ‘No, if I stop my ears I can still hear –’ Paulus stopped abruptly. ‘Why are you talking to me as if I were a child?’

  ‘Was I?’

  ‘No, I beg your pardon, Afranius. To tell you the truth, I think I must have been a little over-wrought, but I feel better now…. Has it ever happened to you that when you shut your eyes you saw little threads of light slowly moving?’

  ‘Once or twice, when I was sick and weary. When we stop you must eat.’

  ‘I may not, until sunset.’

  ‘Look here, fasting is not for those on the march. When we rest, I say, you shall eat if I have to pry your jaws open with my ringers. And don’t think I’m not capable of doing it.’

  ‘You were a great athlete, I have been told.’

  ‘Average, average,’ said Afranius, ‘so-so, so-so.’ He liked to be reminded that he had won a wreath, once, in a Pankration.

  ‘I used to wish I were a big man,’ said Paulus.

  ‘Bah! A man is only as big as his heart. Why, even in Jerusalem they are talking about how you overcame that great fellow what’s-his-name.’

  ‘Iscamyl. I hated to be called Paulus, at first … Concerning threads of light, and all that: when you suddenly opened your eyes, did you see a kind of procession of black dots, as it might be a line of ants each carrying in its jaws a little bit of fire around the balls of your eyes and into your brains? You know how ants make a hill? Well, instead of grains of sand, sparks. Did you see that?’

  ‘No, I can’t say I did. If you don’t eat a good meal this evening, you know, we’ll have to carry you tomorrow; and that will delay us quite a lot. We might even have to leave you behind at some village. I’d stay with you, of course, but it would be devilishly awkward,’ said Afranius.

  Paulus sighed. ‘Perhaps, perhaps…. Do you think Stephanas really suffered?’

  ‘Did you ever have anyone suddenly step on your naked toe?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, then, why ask?’

  ‘I know it offended you, Afranius, but it was the Law, you know.’

  ‘All right, all right.’

  Paulus was growing excited. ‘I am not my own man, Afranius – I am not yet my own master!’

  ‘Yet? Who is his own master, ever?’

  They were riding, now, between two steep, stony slopes. The trail narrowed. Afranius made the sign against the evil eye, muttered some lucky charm phrase, and spat three times.

  ‘Why do you do that, Afranius?’

  ‘Why, because I never yet had good luck coming this way, as I told you. We are coming into the Pass of the Shamir.’

  ‘Of the what?’ asked Paulus, absently.

  ‘The Shamir, Solomon’s Worm….’ Afranius intended to add: ‘After we have passed through it, my bedevilled friend, you shall sleep if I have to stun you,’ but Paulus turned to him so suddenly that his horse started.

  ‘What, must you be for ever at me with your accursed worms?’ cried Paulus with a snarl. ‘Is there rotten cheese in your head, that nothing crawls out of your mouth but worms, and worms, and WORMS?’ His voice had risen so that the officer at the head of the file turned in some amazement. ‘Worms! What have I to do with your worms? Your stallions and your harlots and your worms – what are they to me? Worms!’ he shrieked.

  Afranius sat, aghast, while Paulus grasped himself by the hair, covering his eyes with the heels of his hands, and moaned: ‘Oh, where is the sense in burnishing your armour so that it bedazzles your friends? Tell them to go away, with their blinding armour! … Or stain it brown with burnt bulls’ blood…. And will no one stop the thunder of these bees? Will no one stop me the tramping of these ants? …’

  Then he took his hands away and groped in the air, yelling: ‘Who has stolen the sun? I am bitter cold! I cannot see – the ants have eaten the sun – the roaring bees have sealed my eyes in a cell with six walls! They were not eggs, you fools, they were my eyes, my eyes!’ And, with that, he slipped out of his saddle and fell. Afranius leapt down, and was at his side in an instant.

  The officer halted his men, and rode back. ‘Civilians,’ he said. ‘The gods damn all civilians!’

  ‘He is in a fit of some sort,’ said Afranius, loosening the clothes at Paulus’s throat.

  ‘A fever, more likely…. Does he always wear a goat’s-hair shirt?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘Offended some god, I dare say,’ said the officer, unstopping a bottle. ‘Doing penance.’

  ‘You never can tell.’

  Paulus lay rigid as wood, his hands clenched, his eyes all blood and water.

  ‘This is a hell of a place to have a fit, sir,’ the officer said. I don’t like penitents in hair shirts – they are bad luck.’

  ‘This is a hell of a place for anything, damn it,’ said Afranius. ‘Can we camp here tonight?’

  ‘I suppose so, if we must, but it’s exactly what I’d hoped we shouldn’t have to do. The Azygos men like nothing better than this Pass after dark. They would attack from above.’ Azygos was a bandit, so named because he boasted that in all the world there was none to match him, either in ferocity or ugliness.

  ‘He is simply exhausted, ’said Afranius. Paulus groaned.

  ‘Well, we’ll rig a litter with cloaks and a couple of spears, and get him into the open that way,’ said the officer. ‘Once out of this Pass a day or two makes no great difference.’

  They improvised this litter, then; and so they camped in the plain that evening. Afranius sat apart with Paulus while he froze and burned, started and dozed. Once he cried: ‘Anathema, maranatha – oh, for ever accursed in the presence of the Almighty God is Saul of Joseph of Tarsus! Cursed is Saul because he has murdered his father, cursed is Saul because he has lain with his mother, cursed is Saul because he has slain himself! Cursed is he, because he has shed the blood of his brother, cursed in the presence of the Tablets of the Law!’

  ‘What does he say?’ the officer asked, who happened to be at hand.

  ‘Talking formal Hebraic,’ said Afranius.

  Paulus raved on: ‘Guilty be his ignorance and ignorant be his innocence! Innocence be his guilt, and honour be his shame, for ever and for ever! … Who casts out Saul? I cast out Saul! What is your name? Saul. Who is your father? Joseph! Joseph? Who is your mother? Jaël, Jaël is my mother, a virgin unbroken, unpierced as an eardrum! Then who is your wife, your wife? Oh, Jaël is my wife! Then cursed be Joseph, your father, who begot you on Jaël! Oh abomination! … Within the two triangles of David lies the hexagon of the bee, and sealed therein the worm, the worm clogged with honey and blind….’ He caught his breath.

  ‘Where is Afranius?’ he asked.

  ‘Here, son, here,’ Afranius said.

  ‘I am blind, said Paulus.

  ‘I hav
e put a wet napkin on your silly eyes,’ said Afranius.

  ‘No, no, I am blind. Only at the back of my eyes a fire burns, and there is something that crawls….’

  ‘That’s all right, old fellow,’ said Afranius. ‘Just take it easy. The pipe the gods feed the mind through is narrow enough at the best of times, and you have stretched yours rather fine. If there is something on your mind, tell me about it some other time. Rest now.’

  ‘No, no, I must go to Damascus. Why, what was I saying?’

  ‘Nothing much. You were elaborating Sophocles.’

  ‘Sophocles? What have I to do with Sophocles? I dare say I must have been a little light in the head. It was the reflection off the soldiers’ armour. It is very bad for the eyes…. Do you know what? When I have the say in the matter, I think I shall have soldiers’ armour painted. Not with images. I mean clear green. The soldiers will like that. “Hurrah for Paulus! No more sanding, no more burnishing with ashes!” – that’s what they’ll say. What? …’

  He was talking, now, to some imaginary interlocutor. ‘… But I say green, sir! Paint costs more than sand? Never mind, the enemy pays. And the time thus saved can be spent in javelin-practice upon a dummy Nazarene…. Only first, I must get this wax out of my eyes. Only give me time to get out of this hexagon.

  ‘Yes, Gamaliel, yes, yes; I have done unto others that which is hateful to myself, and I do to myself that which is hateful to others. But all man-made laws are mutable. Think, and you will see that this must be so, for if there were nothing but black and white there would be no need for the Law, only for the Judges. Would you accuse the Almighty of superfluity? I have you there, hah? …

  ‘Hence, gentlemen, there is such a thing as green. What do you say, Nun? Can a blind man, then, be discerning, just, and righteous? What is green, you ask? …’ Afranius held a cup of wine to his lips. Paulus spat it out in a spray. He went on in two different voices:

  ‘What is green? Grass is green…. Green is sharp at the edges, then? In Galilee they circumcise boys with a stretched blade of grass. Then the grass becomes red. What is red? Blood is red…. What is blood? Blood is salt…. Then salt is red? No, salt is white…. What is salt? The sea is salt. Then the sea is white? Nay, the salt sea is green…. Hence, blood is green, then. No, blood is red, I say!

  ‘But blood is salt. Tears are salt. Then tears are red? … Tears have no colour. But what is green? A thorn is green. Then green is pain? Not so, pain has no colour…. Green is pain, and pain is tears and tears are salt; then pain is salt? … No, salt is life…. Then pain is life, and life is green? Some life is green, all flesh is grass…. Life is green, but it cuts, then? … The soft moss is green. Then green is cool? … Yes, green is cool…. A shadow is green? A stone is green? … A shadow has no colour, but a stone is red…. Then pain is red, and not green; but what is red? A rose is red…. Thus, pain smells sweet? Nay, pain smells of sweat…. But sweat is salt, and so are tears, and so is blood, and salt is life; then life is white….’

  A pause, while Paulus writhed in his blanket. Then:

  ‘Again you ask, what is white, then? There is white and there is white. There is rose-white, like a girl’s skin, and there is dead-white like lime; and there is blue-white like a child’s eyes; and living white like lily, and grey white like salt, and clean white like snow, and dying white like a root that lives in the dark…. What is white white? White white is nothing at all, it is death…. Death too is white, then? Then what is black? … Oh, there is black and there is black. There is living black like Dionë’s eyes, and there is dying black, like a bruise; there is blue black like Dionë’s hair, and red black like Stephanas’s blood; and there is shining black like a written word, and dull black like charcoal doomed to the fire; and high black like the night, and low black like the pit, and green black like gangrene; there is rich black like silk, and poor grey black like the goat’s-hair of the tentmakers…. But black, what is black black? That is nothing at all, it is death…. White is death, black is death? Then death is life and black is white, but each being nothing, nothing at all, what then? …’

  Afranius wrote as much of this as he could remember. He heard the mutter and the clank of the changing guard, which meant that four hours had passed since they had camped, and he was very tired.

  ‘Then since there is no such thing as nothing at all …’ Paulus said, in a dreary, fitful voice. Afranius slept a little, while Paulus, he supposed, talked on and on, being in that state of false concentration in which a man may carefully take a handful of flowers to pieces and make senseless geometrical patterns with the petals; or, with the nicest discrimination, gather pebbles of a certain shape and colour, in order to throw them away; or, awaiting some belated event, resolve to stand at one spot until exactly two hundred and twenty-two women have passed, no more, no less. He was awakened, he wrote, by a silence.

  Paulus was sitting up and staring into the shadows beyond the fire. Afranius looked in that direction, and saw nothing but the dim form of a sentry leaning on his spear. But Paulus’s eyes seemed to follow somebody’s approach: he raised his gaze as if to keep it on some face. His hand went back very slowly. Afranius could see the lower whites of his eyes.

  ‘Who is this who comes?’ Paulus asked, in a harsh whisper.

  ‘Lie down,’ said Afranius. ‘The dawn is coming, and nothing more. Sleep.’

  But Paulus talked over Alfranius’s shoulder, and past him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

  If it were a ghost, Afranius wrote, then it must have been one of the harmless, or even benign, ghosts; for he felt, heard and saw nothing. Paulus’s head was forward, now, and he was listening, and as he listened his face fell slack with incredulity.

  ‘Say that again!’ he said.

  There was another silence. Then: ‘Afranius, call the guard!’

  ‘Rest, Paulus, rest, there is nobody,’ said Afranius, wearily.

  ‘Hush a moment, Afranius,’ said Paulus, then to the darkness: ‘Repeat that!’

  A silence, all-pervading. ‘Yes, I believe you are!’ said Paulus, suddenly; and was somehow tongue-tied for the time being.

  Now, wrote Afranius, weariness, the firelight, and the subtle shadows must have played a trick with him. He was looking at Paulus, whose head-dress had fallen back, uncovering his wiry, dishevelled hair, a lock of which fell across his forehead. As he looked, Paulus’s hair became smoother, for all the world as if some invisible hand were lightly caressing his head, while some folds in his sleeve straightened themselves and then folded again, as if a hand were passing over his shoulder and down his arm.

  ‘Because –’ Paulus began, as if in ready reply to some simple question; then stopped. He listened again, and said again, very hesitantly: ‘Because …’

  Then he bowed his head, and said, shamefaced, like a respectable man asked for an explanation of something unseemly said or done when he was drunk: ‘I have no answer. I do not know.’

  And he fell back – or something lowered him back – and he closed his red eyes and was peacefully asleep.

  They carried Paulus most of the following day, but in the late afternoon he said: ‘Why, my eyes are clear again!’ So they were, clear and steady, with the fever gone out of them, and the soldiers were glad to set him down and let him remount his horse and ride.

  ‘Are you sure you are strong enough?’ Afranius asked.

  ‘Thanks, thanks, yes, stronger than ever. I have been mad as a dog, I fear; but now I am in my right mind. Afranius, if in my madness I said anything to offend you, I humbly implore your forgiveness.’

  ‘Bah! For my part, if I spoke a little hastily to you, forget it, Paulus, forget it. No hard feelings.’

  ‘Oh, but my kind Afranius, you never said a hundredth part of what I deserve. I am a little man in every way, and you have a good heart,’ said Paulus.

  The astonished Afranius could only say ‘Bah!’ again. He was more surprised when they pitched camp for the night, and the fires were lit. Paulus took out of a lea
ther box several handfuls of documents, and read them carefully. Misery and distaste made crescents of his eyes and mouth. Stirring the fire with a stick he dropped the parchments into the flames, piece by piece. He explained: ‘My notes, my memoranda and my lists.’

  ‘Nazarene?’ Afranius asked.

  Paulus nodded. ‘I have committed everything to memory. It’s safer there. I shall not need this impedimenta now.’

  ‘Others might,’ said Afranius.

  ‘Yes, I know,’ said Paulus. ‘You will sleep soundly tonight, Afranius?’

  ‘Like a log, unless I have to put fresh wet napkins on your head every five minutes.’

  ‘I am perfectly cool now.’

  ‘Well and good. But that was a tough bout you had – short and sharp. You had better take things a little easier in Damascus.’

  ‘I promise faithfully not to distress you in Damascus, dear Afranius.’

  ‘You had better not. Good night, my boy.’

  ‘God bless you, Afranius.’