by Gustave Kahn
“Then, on feast-days, amid those ornaments, attempting to imagine what their illusions will become, amid the shrill songs rising up to appeal to God, the clarions calling upon the Heavens or announcing he hope of the majestic arrival, amid the harps whose music will be like the cooing of amorous doves, after the voices of cantors summarizing the words of pontiffs, they will sing themselves with their own particular emphasis, and their prayers will be the very image of their souls.
“They will have their palms of hope, still living and green, in their hands, bearing the premises of hope and faith, and perhaps, in the mobile element of their voices, their palms and their desire, something will be manifest of that which we await, we who are about to raise a signal of permanent appeal on the highest place, since our arms are tired of being extended toward the divine horizon.
“Those dances, those songs, will be the same as my song and my dance today. I sang and danced before the ark today, as the soul of the crowd, in its name and in its place; I represented their hope and their young belief, and the bounds of delight of auroral betrothals that inflate their ignorant hearts. Being the king, I had to be, today, the crowd.
“When the temple is built, it will be a square enclosing a casket: a square full of hopeful voices around an empty casket; and the prayers and hymns will be the echo of my song and my dance today. That is the symbol that I need to leave to humankind; that is my monument, the portrait of my dream and its certainties, such as I want my sons in Israel to see it, and delimit it.
“But look at the true verity: down there, beneath its tent of white cloth, like a ewe washed for the alarm or a young woman’s new veils, is the holy ark; to its right and left the flames of resin torches curl and spring up; unreal red tints pass over the temporary abode. A little while ago, the arrows of the setting Sun came to awaken its gems like a sudden burst of light and hope, a beam of contemplative joy, a white blade of radiant faith. And yet, there is nothing there but stones, wood and white veils, which are beginning to flap in the nocturnal wind. And that last burst of light, which the people and the Levites interpreted as a magical promise of clear dawns, for us, should we not see as the flaming blade of the Cherub at the gates of the garden of Eden?
“Soon, this evening, between the torches that are the common sign of delight and mourning, their psalms will declare an echo of their joy once again to their visible God. Do you not read in that song in the night, and those flapping veils and hesitant torches, the universe, and consciousness flapping in a floss of uncertainty at hazard, but nevertheless submissive to a law, unknown to them, unknown to the wind and unknown to us, but which exists? And is not my psalm, like their more naïve one, an interrogation? And if we sing in the mode of certainty, is it not like humans who are afraid in the night attempting to summon up their courage?
Look, Eliah, at the insensible ark and the advancing night—and think of my psalm, Eliah, and my dance. Every day, under the Sun, I have sung and danced, the brightness and the movement imparting a rhythm to the play of my illusion, and now, before the voracious and still-young night, I shiver like an old man. My father’s field is too large; there is no limit to it, no light shines there in the darkness and no one can show me the road to it. The field is too vast and the darkness too intense. I’m shivering, Eliah.”
“As am I,” replied the sage Eliah.
II
“One day,” Joseph said, then, “While passing through the land of Sarras, I had a dream, or vision—for the contours of my dream, if it was a dream, were so clear that my soul considered it as a real moment of my life, or as a monitory from the powers on high.
“David’s ark was before me; it sparkled with an inner light, as if a joyful fire were displaying its red gleams through spars that had become diaphanous. It thus attained a festival color more exquisite than all the gleams of gemstones—and then it opened.
“I saw within it a man clad in red; the fiery splendors that streamed so thickly that they had seemed immobile through the walls of the ark tinted him all over with the incandescence of the setting Sun, but his eyes were as calm and blue as the sea. Five angels surrounded him with a burning transparency; their wings were pure flame and their white faces were afflicted; each of them was holding one of the instruments of Jesus’ martyrdom—the bloody cross, the nails, the crown of thorns, the scourges and a spear—and the blood on all the objects was trickling. And their voices said: ‘The man who has submitted to the hardest and the most derisorily unjust death will awaken to judge others; he has plumbed the abysms of dolor and the entire Earth is soiled thereby.’ The entire ark was a red furnace.
“Then the angels, weeping, seized the man clad in red and nailed him to the cross. He did not resemble Jesus. His bones cried out, and his blood ran from the spear-wound, and a voice said: ‘Behold the emblem of the ark; this has happened to one just man, and it will happen to other just men, and they will take out their pain on those of the bitter word, on those of the voice of salvation.’
“Then the ark seemed broader and taller. It was as vast as a country. Its ignescent walls seemed as distant as the luminous background of a landscape. I saw forests, meadows, rivers, the indented walls of cities, and people dressed in gold cloth huddled together and singing—when suddenly, at a point within that festival landscape, the lugubrious apparatus of the cross and the martyr reappeared. And the men adorned with pure joy, the gentle women and the quiet children, who had been rejoicing before, fled, vanishing like a mist. That superb nature filled up with soldiers with bestial faces, and they remained there, drinking and gambling with dice, whereas the cross and the envoys from on high had already disappeared.
“Then a tall, white-haired, well-dressed old man emerged from the ark. The ark was behind him now, like gray stone and ivory; it was as tall as a temple and the man was in front of the temple’s portico.
“And the voice said: ‘Behold the son of David, the depository of secrets and futures. He has marched for a long time through the crypts of God, and that is why you see him for the first time.’
“But the tall old man was immediately seized by the turbulent arms of a crowd. Every time he died under torture, however, another appeared, to suffer the same fate. Some were nailed to the same cross, others drifted in galleys devoid of oars or sails, and were seen to run aground on peaceful desert islands—but suddenly, those islands were invaded by furious crowds, and their tortures recommenced.
“Finally, as dusk descended upon the landscape, which had almost become a vision of the world in winter, one of these white-haired old men appeared to me, surrounded by a few young men who were listening to him respectfully. As if invisible, they passed through the turbulence of the murderous crowd, which spread out along the banks of a river, shouting. They went into a house of petty appearance, which was immediately lighted in all its windows, and something like a joyful concert was heard. Then darkness fell upon my eyes and my soul.
“And in that dream I saw the promise that there will one day exist a house of faith and happiness, not large and multiple like the world, enveloping it with its immense walls, but a frail dwelling in a valley of dreams, far from howling packs and armed bands.”
“Joseph,” said the King, “Would you like me to tell you another of the apologues of the Master of Kindness? Perhaps it will give you a response to your vision.”
THE NATAL HOUSE
A young man had left his city, his father and his mother—not that he did not love them, but his soul contained all the crazy flames of curiosity and aspiration. He had formed an image of the world according to the tales of travelers who had returned to their hearths long before—which is to say that they were embellished. He believed that at the gates of cities, wise old men, touched by his fatigue, would interrupt their conversations to give him good advice, and that adventurous young men like himself would help him to discover everything about their corner of the Earth.
He saw himself thus associated with all experiences and all the songs of youth, and b
elieved that tresses would be unbound for a stranger who knew tales from far away and had seen other climes.
His route was long and no part of his hope was satisfied. The old men sitting at the gates of cities questioned him thoroughly, asking his name, his age and his origin, and then shook their heads and proclaimed the benefits of stability in the natal house, deploring before him ancient misfortunes whose victims he did not know. The young people were impassioned by their own adventures, some absorbed by hatred of the local tyrant, others living in a great desire for travel and fortune; the latter sometimes accompanied him as for as a bend in the road, but that was all. And the young women laughed together at the spring, no longer astonished by one more passer-by; so many of them disappeared before their large eyes, among the caravans that went through the city without stopping.
Sometimes a tax-collector, alone in his tollbooth, entertained our young man for a little longer, but that was to hear fresh news. Everyone demanded a little of that from him, but no one gave him any—and to his saddened mind, the foreign earth seemed monotonous. As he clung stubbornly to his chimera, however, he continued on his way, with the result that one day, he found himself direly impoverished, exceedingly weary and a long way—a very long way—from home.
He also fell ill, and one evening, exhausted, the fell down by the roadside. It was a road almost devoid of trees, and the sky above his head, palely violet, was impregnated with such total calm and such negative nonchalance, and the silence of the place was so deep, that the young man had the impression that he was going to die there, alone and far from any human assistance.
As the invincible somnolence overwhelmed him, he seemed to see—and did indeed see with the eyes of his soul—a peri.11 The merciful goddess wanted to know the cause of his distress.
“Oh,” he said, “if only I might return to my father’s house. It is in my native land, beside the tranquil river, where the clear water passes over white pebbles; there grow the reeds that I cut, as tall as my childish stature, and where I poured out my confused and ignorant songs. White room where I played on the carpet, which I always saw as high and colossal; fountain in the interior garden, always filtered by the minutes of the maternal smile; maternal house, original basin of the springs of my life; high window from which I discovered for the first time the red, yellow and brown caravans of the infinite plain; fig tree with the first-rate figs, in whose shade I often slept; the little harden all, the first obstacle I was able to overcome—you live on, silent friends whose advice I did not understand, perhaps awaiting the one who wanted to go wandering and would like to become one of you again, and participate in your static calm. Doubtless, today, my father has asked the criers and guides returned from afar whether they have seen me.”
And the merciful peri enabled him to see his father’s house once again, in spirit.
They both departed, and the road was beautiful—much more beautiful than it had ever seemed to the young man when he was traveling it at first, even with the joys of adventure.
The landscapes recognized him. A tree said: “He’s far less sad than he was a little while ago, and his tread is lighter; he’s undoubtedly returning to his father’s house, having got his wish, and the person who is accompanying him is very beautiful.”
A stream that was making a mill-wheel turn tuned its song to his footsteps, joyfully, and the young man realized that it was possible, with that clear accompaniment, to accomplished thousands of joyful strides.
Night rang very numerous silvery bells; they were the peris who were going to visit one another in seductive apparel. Their hair is the color of the fraternal night; on their foreheads they bear the lucid amber color of the plumes of celestial fire that seem to humans to be shooting stars. Their dresses are of every beautiful color, but they pass by so quickly that mortals only see white veils, which they mistake for little clouds; at close range, however, they are exquisite robes whose fabric is made of pearly grains—and to run from one celestial terrace to another they launch themselves forth of exceedingly rapid little horses, which furrow space with their wings, as iridescent as those of the butterflies of the realm of gods and genies. Bells suspended from their necks emit a harmonic confusion of clear notes, infinitely.
On fine evenings, the peris visit one another, or occupy themselves with helping a human in his misery, or, or devote themselves to embellishing flowers and young women, whose features they retouch while asleep, by presenting them with dreams of happiness, or spread long trails of perfume through the world, which drift the following day, idly circulating over the Earth, astonishing with their unexpectedness and complexity the humans who are able to perceive them, without fixing them clearly in memory.
Our young man, his eyes open to all that joyous enchantment, followed his protectress ardently, even though, intoxicated by the perfumed course, he could no longer remember the objective of their journey—and he was very surprised when, in the evening of the city still lit up by a few torches and tambourines, he perceived his father’s house, black and enormous. Only one window was lit, so meagerly that it seemed a crack in the wall, and that mass of masonry was so gray, mute and enclosed that he felt a chill in his heart.
“Oh, Peri, kind Peri, is that really my natal house?”
At that moment, in the only lighted room, he saw his brothers. Thanks to the peri, he could hear them; they were calculating the use that they would make of their future fortune. Their father’s fortune would surely be divided into three parts, since one of them had left and not returned.
“However,” said the eldest, “I can certainly oppose that. Our brother wasn’t one of us; he didn’t understand the language of our hearth; so far as we are concerned, he was born a stranger. And such is the opinion of our father—but our mother will defend him. Anyway, he’s undoubtedly dead.”
That was certainly their desire, but, because they were young and their senses still keen, they had a vague notion of some divine presence, and separated without formulating their thought.
The peri then took him into the room where his aged parents were sleeping, and thanks to her, he visited their dream. He saw himself there, still small and frail, amid all the things that he loved and had once seemed to him to be so large, but as if diminished, dried-out and frayed—and his father and mother saw him too. They both spoke about him often.
The father said: “Infinite justice will bring him back to us; I shall be clement, but he must immediately, not humiliate himself, but take his place at our counters and in our labors.”
And the mother said: “Infinite generosity will bring him back to me; when he comes back I shall heal his wounds and make sure that, for at least three full days, his father will not force him to lend himself to his labors—but he will resume them; feeble as I am, I shall demanded that of him.”
And their dream filled with slow minutiae, hollow-eyed cares. Examining crevasses in the walls, laborious ants ran in all directions.
“Let’s go,” said the young man. “Let’s go.”
As soon as he pronounced those words, he found himself alone on the bend in the distant road where he had fallen down. The sky was brighter and the dawn indulgent. A great calm penetrated the marrow of his bones, like the gentle, still half-broken awakening that follows the fatigues of a long and difficult journey.
He got up and went on his way, into more distant lands. As he knew old chronicles, he told their tales; as he knew songs, he sang them; as he had beautiful handwriting worthy of ancient manuscripts, he applied his calligraphy to documents or copied exemplars of poets for rich people who liked to display books—and he made a living. It transpired that during these years the young man became a man, and, if the cares of his existence were diminished by that, the uncertainties and troubles of his soul became heavier.
One summer’s day, the countryside was scorched by the terrible aspect of the Sun, and he distant hills smoked at the summit like a white fire of mists, and the paving stones of the town, as white as chalk, burned the
feet like bricks hated in a Turkish bath. He went in search of a shady corner in one of the side-lanes of a bazaar.
It was so hot, although the alleyways were cooled by their high vaults, and little black slaves were pouring trickles of perfumed water on to the ground, that all the merchants were asleep on their cushions, without keep watch on their open coffers full of colored scarves and silk mantles, and carpets embroidered with marvelous golden birds, and leaving their caskets rippling with the fires of precious stones wide open. Although their sleep was heavy, their tranquility and security were complete, for the boldest of thieves would not cross the ring of torrid streets that surrounded the bazaar.
Our man sat down on the threshold of a humble shop selling paltry foodstuffs and cheap beverages, and went to sleep. No sound vibrated in the covered streets of the bazaar, save for the words of dreams, and the black slave responsible for sprinkling yielded to fatigue and went to sleep.
The man’s dream told him that his temples were going gray, and that he was even further away than the day when he thought he had visited his father’s house, his birthplace. It seemed to him that it was sinking, but very slowly, sliding not through the streets but into the gray mirror of a lake.
He thought he heard a vague sound of weeping, and the peri of the former vision reappeared to him, who knew wrinkles, still cheerful and light-hearted in her immortal youth—and as he wanted to see his father’s house, she took him away so that he might see it via the mind’s eyes.
The road glittered like a furnace; where he had seen trees, the area was cleared, and further way, near clumps of woodland, teams of woodcutters were asleep beside their axes. The stream that made the mill-wheel turn accompanied him again with its song, so lively that one might have believed, and even desired, that one could take thousands upon thousands of strides to the enthusiastic accompaniment to its laughter—but the man understood that the stream was so cheerful because it recommenced the same circuit indefinitely, and that its apparent gaiety was only movement.
