by Gustave Kahn
Loud noises brought people running, and before they were able to wound one another grievously, the men-at-arms of the watch had surrounded them and taken them prisoner.
The officer of the watch, embarrassed because of the importance—at least for the day—of the two captives, took them to the palace, in order to refer the matter to the emperor. They were each locked in a room. A short time afterwards, men came into Samuel’s room, put him in chains and blindfolded him.
He was not able to see again until he was in his cell.
A loud noise of chains and the cry of a slaughtered animal tore Samuel from his reverie. An atrocious, inarticulate clamor had just terrified him.
“People are killed here, then,” he murmured. “So be it—but why?”
Footsteps were heard, jailers opened his door, set down a ladle and a pitcher in a corner without saying a word, and went out again.
“It’s not just for today, at any rate,” he said to himself, “But where am I, then? In what singular prison, so dismal and tragic?”
Chapter Four
THE COURTYARD
A jailer shoved Samuel into a large courtyard and said to him: “You can go until someone calls you back. You’re in the open air and good company here.”
The latter hesitated momentarily before the meager sunlight; his legs, only just released from their chains, were unsteady. Then he went forward, slowly and confusedly. A few ragged individuals with overly large eyes considered him. Samuel went to a bench and sat down.
The fresh air, even parsimoniously poured between high grey walls, dilated his lungs. A man sidled over, and said: “One and one make two, and two makes four, and four makes eight, and eight makes sixteen, and sixteen makes thirty-two. Ha!” Then he sat down. “Tending my meager vines near the seashore, I earned ten ducats. I put fifteen years into it; I was a serf; I needed strong vine-stocks, energetic vine-stocks, patient vine-stocks, heaped up like this—even higher than this—to glean ten ducats. They came in helmets, armor and strong boots and took everything, you know. One day, I released Silenus, who had been beaten with a beanpole; he blessed my efforts, and for nearly a century, my ducats grew like beautiful trees; here’s my accounts, you see”—he took out some sheets of paper—“you see, I’m going to buy the Empire. I’m waiting for the right moment, when that door opens. You look like a good man—you can be the seneschal. Would you like that? Would you? You look tired; I’ll buy you a horse.”
He got up and tiptoed away, turning round and making urgent signals.
Another man approached. “Seigneur, that merchant has doubtless wearied you; he abounds in strange words; one is obliged to shut him up. I’m locked up myself, though: Fritt, divine counselor. I’m the pupil of the famous Syracusan Megacles, who has discovered that the Sun is an enormous animal, a sort of chameleon, but with wings of a membranous sort, like those of a bat. It flies perpetually above our heads; the Sun is its only eye; the Moon is the same eye, whose light we perceive attenuated by its lowered eyelid. But here’s my enemy...”
And with a piercing voice and an ardent eye, a little man bounded toward him.
“Is the world still sand, and more sand, with brambles and lizards? Where do you come from, stranger? From far away? Then you’ve seen the sand, yet more sand, accumulate; worlds appear and disappear; the wind models them during the night; the Earth is never the same two dawns running; but every day, as perhaps you know, the old demon Habitude, our enemy, works to bring it back to a conventional form. Oh, how beautiful and varied the world would be, if the demon Habitude no longer existed!
“Listen, but don’t say anything. They hope to capture him and chain him up here; perhaps it will take thousands of years, and I’ll be very old, very old, when he comes. He’ll be so big that we’ll all be relegated to the attics; we’ll only be able to see the Enemy cast down and chained through narrow windows, like cracks, and perhaps I’ll be blind. Oh, what misfortune, what misfortune!”
And he bellowed in anguish.
A young man was hopping frantically around the courtyard; he passed by swiftly, hurriedly, murmuring: “Throw men-at-arms at me, pikemen; march, march…victory!”
An old man, weeping with laughter, imitated him ineptly. He addressed himself to Samuel: “There goes Alexander of Macedon and Caesar the Roman. He has wings on his feet, he runs after his shadow.”
But the pupil of Megacles chased him away, uttering squeals.
“That old man,” he said, “has been a swineherd; he annoys everyone with the bestial odor he retains about him; he was put here for annoying everyone. He’s a coarse emanation of the universe; he was introduced here as a measure of persecution, to disturb our serene discussions—but permit me to leave you. I have to meditate.”
Samuel got up and started walking. He understood. Prison would have been less harsh than this madhouse. But why this vengeance, and who could have anything to avenge upon him?
A voice sang:
From the distant tower,
one can see the sea, the ship, the devil
and the girl combing her long hair.
To the distant tower
the evil king has exiled me
because my timid confession
reached the ears of the queen.
Destiny overwhelms me,
they have put me in chains.
One can see the sea, the ship, the devil.
The priest of Saint Martin
has exorcised this morning
the girl who combs her long hair
in the window of the distant tower
and the soldiers with hollow bellies
have killed and eaten everything.
The beech that sang has been split
and the leaves have been dispersed.
One can see the sea, the ship, the devil.
My poor soul is sorely wounded,
crows laugh, for it is all white
in its skipping gentleness;
from the distant tower
one can see fields of snow,
fields of foam, fields of sand,
and here is my procession,
my great pain with lowered eyes.
From the distant tower
one can see the sea, the ship, the devil.
It was a pale young man who was singing. Next to him, another young man was weeping and repeating; “Here, to fill the pool of my distress, are tears, more tears; they’re as red as my blood. Oh, when will she return? Oh, when will she return? I’m already nearly blind. I’ll never see her again.”
Another prisoner, powerfully-built, approached Samuel. “Is that you, traitor?”
“What? What do you want?”
“I recognize you, although never having seen you; today you are the man who marches in my shadow.”
“Eh? Certainly not.”
“Yes, every day the evil one creates a new enemy; no one would dare to touch my brain; they know the world is born there; it would be too dangerous to try to touch it; I carry it safely in this left hand, and the right is here to defend it; but since they have discovered that the ideas develop and ripen by passing through the shadow that is our simplified portrait, the portrait of our soul awaiting the man we built of ourselves and within us, they train the executioner’s servants to chase our shadow and intercept the progress of truths—but I take hold of them, and you shall not escape me.”
He was already raising his right hand when howling burst forth. Two captives had hurled themselves at one another and were rolling on the ground, bloodied and foaming at the mouth. The guards arrived, armed with whips, and struck the unfortunates. Beneath their blows, amid loud fearful squealing, the courtyard emptied, and the prisoners were taken back to their cells.
Samuel threw himself on his pallet, irritated, mortally sad and bloody—for he had been struck, and had defended himself.
THE VISIONS
He begged that he not be taken out again. Fever ate away at him, and he was no longer able to touch the coarse prison food. He
waited, lying down, for some miracle no less unexpected and bizarre than his imprisonment to render him respirable life—and in his oppressed mind, the strange and perverse enchantment of vision, consolatory and tyrannical, unfurled its long ribbons of anguish or fury...
There was a short paunchy old man, trotting along, mumbling and whispering. He ran along and immense terrace, raising his hands to the Heavens.
“Eternal, Eternal,” he cried, “when shall I see anything new under your Sun? Always the waves and always the wind, and the umbels of plants, which open and close in your hands, dewy in the morning, igneous at midday, bloody in the evening, black by night, as with some fatiguing and filthy work.
“Eternal, you have made me, I am your fault, your very great fault. Why, with colossal tortoises, immense plants, long serpents that sleep after swallowing prey, and spiteful dragons, and the beasts of the dens, the burrows and the mire, did you create a being with consciousness? Why did you set him upright, on two legs? Was it to let him know that one cannot look your solar palaces in the face?
“Eternal, Eternal, what did you want from us when you woke us up in the mute chain of dreams? We stood up, our hands feeling that they were tearing themselves from an embrace; we had neighbors, whom you had allowed to sleep. What were they? Why did you choose us, mosses marching on the Earth, and nourish us with sap, if we were to be ignorant, if we were to turn on one another, suffering for suffering, forgetting nothing and knowing nothing?
“Behold your son, too, at the foot of this wall, scraping his ulcers with a potsherd, and asking himself why he is this pestilent dot in your avenues of indifference. Behold your son, his limbs rent upon a cross, and why that dot of agony in the avenues of your indifference? Behold your son, torn apart by furious women, and why that pale head rolled by the rivers of your indifference?19
“Why are the great pyres of the mountains replying, and the herdsmen there flinging oaks, saying: ‘we are waiting for the new,’ and the priests in the sanctuaries saying: ‘so they say.’ I am old, I am tired; why have you given me, in this weary and ugly body in the form of a calabash, in this body adherent to the rugose Earth, this unknown desire, this desire to see your face other than veiled by the archangel’s blade? Or at least, if you are only the elastic and deceptive fire before the real face, to which worlds want to weep, why has Job not finished suffering…?”
“Man, the hair-shirt is on my back. You’re heavy and turn around and around, and complain of not knowing how to get out of yourself. Me, I’m strewn at crossroads with torture-victims on the cross. In traveling, I plough the infinite route of miseries. The man will never come who will break the padlock of dolor and undo the seals of the shackles compressing our limbs. The horse Aquilon20 leaps from North to South, and from East to West without finding anything but women wringing their hands beside bruised and careworn men, who remain seated in order to make them stand up! They lied, the voices of the annunciation, or it’s an ancient dotard’s dream transmitted to us by our ancestors...”
And in the Heavens, the Eternal, hearing these plaints, said to Azrael: “We have to do something.”
Azrael’s great wings darkened the air; his lance touched the two old men who were complaining; his palms seized their fluttering souls, and from the two spirits of discontent he fashioned a single soul. It was habituated both to wealth and poverty, to desire and contrition, to power and misfortune. It had already groaned a great deal; the décor of palaces and visions of the desert were already painted therein in violent strokes; it had already grown old in pleasure and suffering.
Azrael’s wings beat and rose up. His broad wings brought momentary night to the noble palaces of Sion; beasts bellowed as if a storm were approaching; a heavy sleep invaded the grand palace. Azrael passed overhead; the little prince Solomon was asleep. Azrael touched him with his lance and collected his soul; he kneaded it with the one he was carrying and woke the little prince, who gazed at the enormous figure, the enormous wings, and especially the soft and calm eyes, like a beautiful harbor full of ships at rest at the approach of dusk, with which the angel bathed him.
“Who are you?” asked the child. “I seem to remember icy spaces.”
“You have not budged from here; I am the oldest of your brothers; you shall see me again.” And he put the child to sleep again by caressing him with one hand.
“You now have all of the human soul,” he said, “the impatience and the ennui, and the unquiet desire to extract from his own clay a statue of the unknown man, of the man who slips through crowds, and the profound grief and bitterness of the most ancient sufferer, the man who has not been spared any thorn—and also your infant candor, and all of your future strength. You shall hurl yourself at all objectives; you shall burn, that the statue sculpted in your soul will shine with divine fire on the vastest platform and the highest mountain, and you shall have the strength to desire little—but all the glories and pleasures will doubtless have, for you, the bitter taste of ashes, for your new soul is already old, and no power can create an entirely innocent soul.”
Azrael’s flight carried him away into limitless deserts. He soared like an immense eagle. In the sandy immensity, scarcely studded with a few hillocks, he touched a large stone slab with his lance. “Eve, Hagar, Mobed!” he exclaimed. “Get up—the messenger is here.”
The stone slab rose up, and a tall form freed itself from the folds of a shroud. “Here I am! It’s really you! Am I not safe here?”
And the angel said: “It is necessary for you to return to Earth once more; you must bring about the rebirth of the Eden that you have carried for so long in your hollow eyes; your lips shall smile, your supple hips shall sway over the world; you shall recreate the great perfumes of voluptuousness. The Creator has need of you. Come—you shall be called Balkis.”
The tall form had emerged from the tomb where she had been asleep for Centuries.
“You are no longer the mother; you are becoming the woman again.”
And the long grey hair fell away, and the severe and angular lines of the body softened, and Eve reappeared in her candor of the world’s first day. The angel carried her to the terraces of an immense temple; at the impact of his lance the priests came running and veiled their eyes with their hands.
“Here is your queen,” said Azrael.” And the priests led her away to crown her and announce to the people of Sheba that the prophetess was revealed.
Near the temple, a palace abruptly rose up, as if it had been there all the time and the sudden dissipation of a fog had suddenly revealed it to the gaze, in response to the smile of Balkis; palm-trees sprang from the ground and crowned themselves with their acclamatory palms; Balkis’ fingers touched bushes, and there was a forest of rose-bushes praising all the violent, dominating or hidden nuances of flesh; a smile passed over her lips and the whiteness of her teeth appeared, and that was the signal for an immense florescence of lilies; and the Sun came to light the flesh of her cheeks and a population of gilded flowers appeared in the corners of the garden.
She walked, and the springs murmured; she ran over transparent beds of white marble in order that an agile mirror might exist in consequence. She raised a branch to her lips and heavy ripe pomegranates were born, and vines extended, clusters of red and white grapes swelling in order to be sweet to her lips; she picked up a pebble and enormous gems gleamed between her fingers, and outside the gates of the great marvelous garden, the priests massed guards with golden shields; she sang, and a thousand birds replied, and a thousand birds arrived from every corner of the sky, and cherubim descended from the Heavens to bring her veils and robes in the purest colors of the clouds.
She threw a great saffron-colored veil around herself and went back up the steps of the palace, and on all the terraces of the city people gathered to acclaim Eternal beauty.
In the evening, the stars trembled on the lake; a perfect sweetness emanated from the drowsy languor of flowers. Souls in repose learned down from the Heavens to watch the valleys o
f Sheba fill with violet light, brighter than the night, softer than the day. Lunar gleams silvered the fronds and extended a candid ribbon of slightly roseate snow over the palace. Large swans cleaved the waves beside boats. One perfumed boat carried the queen’s repose over the lake, and on the colonnades that bathed in the calm water, choirs of men and women with voices of delight responded. One might have thought the white cadences of a dance were visible in the sky.
It seemed to Samuel that he heard his own voice resonating among the choirs.
CHOIR
O purity,
your softness spreads in infinite candors
over the bosom of the Earth. She awaits your kiss;
the Earth has been dreaming all day
and labors have split her with their nourishing plowshares
and her forehead is furrowed with wrinkles.
She dreamed that in arid lands
her children were suffering and cursing.
O purity, in your white smile you appeared
and you pass your dewy fingers over your weary forehead
O purity.
OTHER CHOIR
Behold, with the evening, the blessed herb is sprouting,
O dream, transport me, all day long I have toiled
against the agile smoke in which my soul hangs
and instants were flowing that I could not collect
and like the spark, living and flying away;
O dream transport me, that I might become
between your fingers of the dawn;
shall I see your heavy golden gates open
on countries where I awoke
before, or will the wicker cradle
of yesteryear, render me my soul
in order that I may listen?
O dream, your palm and your solace,
blessed herb of dream I want to respire.
CHOIR
Her smile awakes in the roses
