by Gustave Kahn
She multiplied the goats of the herd
and dulcified the grass they grazed with balms;
her voice smoothed the cradling lips of nurses,
and inflated the grave voices of priestesses
when the heroes fought against the harsh giants.
Her hands, her fine golden hands,
her lips, her beautiful lips of balm
soothing after evenings of combat
her sons and her men.
Her caressing hands unlacing helmets,
her tender voice caressed the men
too weary of the broken blade and overlong road,
too weary in the face of fate.
Mobed, profound flower in the depths of the ravine
where the soul of life’s evening stumbles,
you decorate on errant nights the gardens of enchantment,
you console through the long day the stumbling slave.
It is your smile that the poor man divines
along the cool sashes of the wind.
They are your eyes, the beacon in the dark shadow
of those gardens of silence and diamonds,
that are the brief clouds, the vast sea and the eternal eve.
And the old servant lost himself in his reverie. It dated from long ago, and its distant limbo was only reminiscent of harshness and misfortune, of shackled hands and hobbled feet; of slow-leading wounds striping his flesh before a kinder destiny, by the hand of conquest, had detached him from that heavy servitude in order that he might come under the benign domination of the king. The beast of burden and fatigue that he had been throughout the years of his youth hand then lain down in a fresher litter, and his function had been to follow Balthazar in his wanderings and serve him. He had accompanied him faithfully, his heart everpresent, and his soul too, haunted by a quest for gentleness and hesitant in its generosity. He loved the image of Mobed because those features had given form to his own disheveled and personally inaccessible dream, and he venerated it as a present and tangible promise—inanimate, but a promise nevertheless.
His appointed task at this hour was preparing for the King’s evening meal, and soon, under the caress of the breeze, between enormous gently undulating torches, bruits and beverages, meat-dishes and cups were set out for the solitary meal that he had to serve.
AN ENCOUNTER IN THE PAST
On the table, an open pomegranate displayed its droplets of congealed blood in a silk of mat gold, enclosed in a solid red and yellow rind like a nomad’s cloak; the down of figs recalling the nacreous coolness of a sacred wood, and the suntanned dates reminiscent of a golden grape in which the mist of a sunrise remained, no longer tempted the King.
From a turquoise-bellied jug the slave poured him a profound wine with golden gleams like a lake in the kind of paradise of which children are able to dream. At his gesture, the servant, standing until then, sat down on a mat and filled a goblet of violet glass for himself. That is a custom established by the wise Balthazar, and, at this hour, weary of the expectations which he is calculating for the future, he likes to revisit with the other man the dead hours of their life, according to the infantile wanderings of his fancy.
“Do you remember, Sire King, that journey which was interrupted, so many years ago? My memory often returns to it—not that its ups and downs were particularly notable, but it’s undoubtedly the only time that we didn’t arrive at a destination determined in advance, especially in those times of you maturity when you were seeking out the masters of wisdom, in order to learn from them and debate with them.
“Your friends Melchior and Gaspar were coming from their domains to an arranged rendezvous. It was usually at the junction of the eastern and western roads, close to a ravine that might shelter a caravan for the night, near the still-recent ruins of an old mercantile city. By night, the air still seemed to shimmer with the sonorous waves of the ancient words of Solomon. Next to the fires of forest trees, which seemed to mirror the sunset, sitting on the ground in your white burnooses, all three of you had the semblance of statues in the face of the incorporeal image of Horeb, which appeared to Moses, or before the mobile and ardent veil woven by the eternal Hours before the irreducible face of Isis.7
“Why, Master, did we not go further that day? Had we not chartered a numerous and well-laden caravan in order to go to Liban meet the man that people called the Doctor of Kindness?”
“Dares, having lived with me for so long, you sometimes evoke the moths that dance around an old dying lamp, of a memory that has only just revived in me. More than once, my two brothers in thought and I, before age froze us in our distant palaces and out henceforth-distant souls, talked about those days, and the predictions that informed us of experience and destiny.
“We were going toward Liban; our course traversed the sands where our Ishmaelites celebrated our presence by sending their falcons to hunt birds in the sky and jousting with their long lances.
“It was in a place called El-Hissa. We arrived by way of a gentle slope on the crest of a hill, whose other faces fell sheer to a yellow plain with pale clumps of greenery. On the flank of one of those escarpments, at the level of the plain, we saw a seated woman who was clasping a child in the folds of her blue burnoose, and a man who seemed to be searching for something among the stones. Was he hunting a jerboa? At the sight of horsemen, he seemed to want to flee, but in the face of the impossibility and our friendly appeals to his probable misfortune, he stopped, and told us that his name was Joseph the Carpenter, and that he was fleeing toward Judea.
“You know that shepherds and goatherds look after hollow stones and cavities apt to retain the rainwater that falls therein; at such places, known to them, they are able to find a little water in the dry season, and for fear that the source of life might run dry, they cover up their hiding-places with stones. It was that aid and comfort for which the man was searching amid the rocks of the hill; the poor travelers were exhausted. They found water-skins and a tent in our camp.
“The young woman, whose name was Mary, was miraculously beautiful, even by comparison with the imperious face of that Mobed, the calm and meditative forehead of that Theano and the excited child-like candor of that Glyphtis. Pure and delicate features, harmoniously silky, in which the Hebraic curve of the nose was attenuated; profound eyes devoid of astonishment, sparkling like a drop of pure water on a calyx; hair covered with the habitual head-dress of her race; a lovely mouth; and throughout her person, an attitude of infinite respect toward all those around her, which raised her above them.
“Joseph had chosen the purest of the young woman of a village in Galilee. He still spoke to her as one touches a precious and fragile vase. In fact, on seeing a soul of nacre inspire her rare movements, and her eyes reflect a divine security, the idea of the possession to which women submit was dispelled; one understood that the carpenter was still surprised by the delights of marriage, and that he had forgotten them before the immaculate quality of that young face. He was a Believer before the revelation by beauty of stars, clouds and murmurs of the echo of the Word.
“The child was beautified by weakness and the caress of Mary’s hands.
“Do you remember, Dares, that Herod reigned by violence? His harsh soul, besotted with dancing-girls and tortures, dismantled by the phantasms of his remorse on the nights of his lassitude, sometimes cracked with fear like its infantile counterparts in the darkness of a cell. That soul was a labyrinth in which the superstitions of Asia and Rome were wandering, without being able to get out. He was a king of men, but not of his own nerves; terror struck him down with the sacred disease.
“On cowardly evenings, via his ears and his will, nursery tales commanded him to capital executions. The Asiatic tribes believed that an armed and naked child would preside in Heaven over the death of kings in the ashes of cities. The Romans prostrated themselves on hearing that before great tragedies, fire-spitting lions haunt the vicinity of the Capitol; that the old sibyls reappear, enormous silent specters
, their hands lit up by torches, that she-wolves crazed by pregnancy come to bite emblematic statues, when the faces of the heroes fixed in the marble silently stream with tears; that on those evenings, monsters with staring eyes emerge from the rivers in waves of slime, foaming with wrath.
“At Passover, when the Hebrews come from every direction, in concord, to bow down to their God in Jerusalem, what extortionist, what mercenary, what charlatan historian of the sky would trouble that weak mind? Would they want to pile up dead bodies in rubble? Did some self-important individual, seized by folly, want, through Herod, to imitate the miracle of the children of Egypt, struck down in a night of anger, or was a new mode of condemnation necessary to amuse his cruelty? All the new-borns were to perish in a single night.
“Joseph was warned by one of the followers of the Master of Kindness. The latter, without knowing precisely what was being planned, had foreseen some horrible carnage, and their voices counseled the temporary exile and indicated refuges. But were the sages believed? If they were believed, there was hesitation regarding their advice. Joseph and Mary were alone in their candor in sensing the imminence of fatalities, and their love for their child was so inexhaustible that they resolved to flee even the shadow of danger and go away.
“The following days would have presented the mirror of Edenic epochs, so glad were they to have sheltered their offspring from the slightest squall. Their goal was Egypt, where, in the populous cities, a man might easily life by the work of his hands; besides which, Sadducees and Hellenes were able to live in peace there.
“Melchior, Gaspar and I thought that a child thus protected, whose father was all honest virility and mother all devotion, holy timidity and courage in the face of adversity, would be protected throughout his youth and led toward the highest foundations of the human soul. The loving miracle of his conservation presaged other miracles in his life, and we said so. As it is necessary to treat poor and unknown guests better than kings followed by starry standards and caparisoned camels, and not daring to offer these saints money, on the evening they camped with us we entertained them with music, singing and legends. Shepherds attracted by our fires came to rejoice with us. The night was admirable, and God’s torches gently illuminated the surrounding terrain.
“The next day they left, a little richer in food supplies; our horsemen helped them to cross the arid sand; our progress was halted. It would have been painful for us to go through blood-stained Judea in order to discuss higher knowledge and virtue. We stayed together for a few days, and then went our separate ways.
“What became of them—Joseph the Carpenter, Mary, so beautiful and gentle, and their child, blessed by chance from the very beginning? I don’t know. Shall we ever know? The unbridled couriers of destiny abound on all the world’s roads, without ever meeting one another.”
THE GUEST
The diaphanously oily waves of the dawn had invaded the colorless highways, and the calm mirror of the sea reflected gilded harvests in its glaucous grass. A perpendicular arrow came over its surface, tracing the long wake of a blade of solar silver.
The irradiated solitudes were deserted, and there was an ecumenical silence around the palace. Long ripples of water came to stroke the steps of opalescent marble where bubbles of foam were born and died. The depths of departure and arrival, all the way to the illusory wall of the horizon, seemed gathered like a pure festival décor that the first sound, the first footfall, the first chord, no matter how faint it might be, would break.
For a few minutes, there was a pure presence of light.
Then a voice sang from a tower:
The hands of the future, on another propitious day
open the battens of the silent temple
where the candles of our heart, toward the mystic gems
of the golden star, reflection of the red infinity,
melt and spread forth their human spices.8
The plain extends to the limits of our desires
and our footsteps toward piety and pity;
our eyes that decipher the future in the night
will still live that day in the face of beauty,
calming the dream anxious that it has gone astray
with the momentary presence of bright lyres.
Greetings to those here, greetings to those who watch
in the love of being gentle, tomorrow as yesterday
and decking their hearts with an hour of purity.
Greetings to those elsewhere; greetings to the old soul
who will come to retemper in the Sun-haunted palace
his body broken by wandering on treacherous paths.
Then human life flowed, starring the clear mirrors of silence with its cracks.
King Balthazar had returned, alone and meditative, to the large terrace where the daylight ornamented the faces of the superhuman frescoes with its splendors. Abruptly warned by prescience, the contemplated the monotonous sea and perceived a black line in its insensible swell; it was floating like a sturdy abandoned branch, but heading nevertheless for the coast, and the waves never covered it.
At closer range a boat appeared; closer still, and a man became discernible thereon. The latter, astonished, gazed at the vast façade toward which the erratic will of fate was driving him. He was neither steering to rowing; the boat was small and hollow, without ornaments, like that of the poorest fisherman. A large white beard covered the breast of the man, clad in a long dark robe without a glint of gold, silver or color. The boat ran aground against a marble step and a wave carried it away again, now rocking hesitantly, fluctuating at the slightest pressure of the waves. The man climbed the marble steps with a firm tread, holding an elongated casket of simple wood in both hands.
The Mage-King greeted him.
“Be welcome, guest who has arrived among us, surrounded by calm, by the perilous and mysterious path of torments. It is easy to discern that the will that floated you over the liquid crests, devoid of oars and deprived of a tiller, was sending you to me, or toward some more profound power to which I ought to furnish you with guides, along with the necessities of travel. Certainly, your venerable air and the tranquil maturity of your gaze imply that you are not one of those scoundrels whom human wrath casts adrift on the ocean in a boat without rigging. If, however, that is the case, and mercy has only descended upon you in the final moments of your life, be welcome nevertheless, for the sign of momentary mercy will have enlightened you. And if the rhythmic respiration of the waves alone drove you here, soul still weighed down by a shadow, be welcome still and accept the greeting to which the god Hazard has brought you. Whatever language your actions have spoken, be welcome.”
And the guest replied: “I have come to you. The child that you encountered in the sands of Idumea, the son of Joseph and Mary, has died under torture. As you, the mages, had predicted, his childhood increased in splendor and in knowledge, and without the doctors he divined the human soul. His clear mind, scorning the ambiguities of commentary and the anniversaries of ritual, understood that humans are weak before the great eternity of the Gaze; and his soul attempted, first of all, never to hide behind the wrathful wind of unjust words, for the most remote hiding-places become sonorous with the frightened cries of the wounded conscience.
“When he knew himself limpid in virtue, innocent in mediation, heightened by certainty, he came to talk to the doctors. Some he charmed, others he confused, but doctors are too numerous in too many towns. Then, knowing the brief instant of the Ephemerae, he preferred that simple folk should be his neighbors and live according to his example. He explained to them the hope of the trembling creature before the resorbent totality, and the visions of harmonic silence in the total magnificence of the Word and Motion.
“His doctrine was one of resignation, frugality and forgiveness. He wanted tolls to be paid, publicans not to be hated, the dolorous to be freed and sins to be washed away, for why punish the unconscious plants that grow on the world’s crust? And when his numerous following o
f fishermen, artisans, soldiers and merchants, renouncers of false ostentation, women with dark or gilded tresses, swollen with exuberant sap but henceforth ardent for the truth, arrived on a hill near a city it was without the splendor of worldly kings, without cymbals and acclamations, but, on the contrary, with the slow pensive manner, ornamented with gentle gaiety, of those who have nothing to repent. The infirm believed in him sufficiently to be cured by contact with him, and queens of the flesh abdicated their power at his feet. The valleys of Palestine were, for a time, the lost garden of still-innocent humankind; missionaries set forth to preach the simplicity of life to the peoples of distant shores.
“But when they were too numerous, because the divine work is only able to appear momentarily and the multiform host of phenomena must incessantly recover it, dissension burst forth among the newcomers to the army of faith, and it was they who furnished the weapons of false testimony to the resistant forces of domination by usury, fraud and the blade. They pretended to believe that he, who wanted the lucid crowns of human love, was some new aspirant to a diadem and the property of a citadel in the heart of a canton.
“And Jesus, the son of man—thus named by virtue of his filial love for that antique uncertainty, Man—was crucified between two bandit chiefs seized with weapons in hand, for the conquest of illusory gold. The blows of terror dispersed his partisans, and his friends left to propagate the truth by means of stories and, at need, the example of a pure life cut short by torture.
“I was not, at first, one of these who followed him. On his own advice, after he had melted my old heart with an aspiration toward virtue, I remained one of the powerful individuals of the city of Jerusalem, in order that no iniquity should emanate from the rights I exercised. The torments of savage joy that greeted the weary march of the just toward agony gave me a horror of the world, and I no longer wanted to do anything but supervise charity.
