Was it true? Was I really to linger on and on, see friends and things I cherished die and crumble away? Was I to stare into infinity, seeking for him, at whom I shouted ‘I hate you!’? My youth prolonged into eternity seemed to me a much greater catastrophe than the wrinkles of Pilate’s wife which a few years would erase forever.
“Lydia, my dear, it seems to me that my hair is getting gray at the temples. Look!” I wished to see if she, too, was aware of my predicament.
“Let me see. Let me see,” she said, excitedly. In her eyes, less lustrous than of yore, I saw a great delight. She ruffled my hair, and looked very closely. “No, not even one gray thread.” She burst into sobs.
“What’s the trouble, my dear?”
“Nothing.”
I did not want to press the matter, fearing that I would have to explain too much, perhaps. The next day, she took an overdose of a drug, prescribed for her by the physician, for some intestinal derangement. For three days she was in agony. Her head seemed to have shrunk to half its size. Her body assumed the contours of a skeleton. She looked at me wistfully.
“It was the only way out,” she said.
“No, you did a terrible thing. You have hurt me beyond words.”
She shook her head. “I have noticed for a long while how my hands grated on your skin, and my lips brought nothing but a chill. You are young. I am old. This was what you meant the other day when you asked me to look at your hair. I understood.”
I was stunned. “No, no, my dear, it was not that. It was not that! I hoped that I too– —”
Her convulsions became more and more violent. The physician could prescribe no antidotes. More painful even than her approaching death, was her misunderstanding of my motive. I had really killed her—unwillingly!
On my return from her funeral, Aurelia, the most beautiful courtesan in Jerusalem accosted me. King Herod himself had paid for her embrace one thousand talents in gold.
“Cartaphilus, spend the night with me!”
My first impulse was to upbraid the insolent woman, but I felt so lonesome, a sorrow so deep gnawed me, that I could not wrench my arm from her grasp.
Fatigued by her caresses, I fell asleep profoundly. When I awoke, she asked me, smiling: “Cartaphilus, where is the place?”
“What place?”
“I have searched your body everywhere with my lips…”
“Your lips pleased me.”
I was always gallant.
“I am glad of that. But I have not discovered it…”
“What do you mean?”
“The prick of the needle where you insert the magic potion that gives you undying youth. I have loved much. I have shared the couch of many. I have known the loves of old men from whose touch the skin shrinks as from a reptile. I know that you must be sixty, but you have the skin of a boy, the muscles of a gladiator, the insatiable endurance of youth. I have given you joy when you were most distressed. I can give you tenfold, a hundredfold greater joy, Cartaphilus. I know the love secrets and the love potions of fifty nations. I know,” she whispered, “the secret of unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged… All my knowledge will be yours, if only– —”
What?”
“If only you will let me share your secret.”
I pushed her away from me.
“Cartaphilus!” Her delicate breasts trembled. “Make me your wife, and let me partake of the elixir. I have been all women to all men. I shall be all women to you alone.”
“You are raving, woman! The heavy wine has gone to your head. Let me sleep.”
Her face grew livid with rage. “You fool! You really believe that I care for you? I loathe you! Even the old men, who come to me with their silver and gold, with lecherous lips and limbs marred by disease, are not as loathsome as you. They are at least human…!”
She stamped angrily out of the room.
‘At least human!’ reverberated in my ear, as the other phrase which I always tried not to repeat, even mentally. Not human! Not human! I was set apart from all other men. I was alone. Everybody would sooner or later point at me: ‘Stranger! Outcast! Alien!’
I dressed myself and went to consult the most famous physician of Jerusalem, an old rascal, addicted to strange drugs and stranger vices. I explained my case to him. He laughed. “You are the first patient who complains that he is too young. I need prescribe no medicine. Time will remedy matters.”
“I am not jesting. I bring gold, but also a—dagger.”
He bade me strip. His lecherous eyes devoured my naked body. He felt every muscle, tested every nerve with the strange instruments known to the priests of Isis, analyzed my saliva, measured the pressure of my blood. He consulted his books and pondered over old diagrams.
“You tell me that you are sixty. I tell you that you are thirty. You may bring any witnesses you please. You may swear a solemn oath by your mother. I shall never be convinced that you are more than thirty. You may even slay me, Captain, but that will not alter my conviction.”
“Doctor, can I have children?”
He summoned a slave girl. Hovering near, he waited upon us like the obliging maid in a house of pleasure. Then, assuming once more the cold severity of the physician, he brought strange vessels from his laboratory, and made curious tests.
After pondering over his retorts, he turned to me: “No, you will have no progeny, Captain. Fate which has given you much has denied you this.”
‘However long your life may be, Cartaphilus,’ I thought bitterly, ‘you must walk without kin,—alone!’
VII: I AM ACCUSED OF DEALING WITH THE DEVIL—I LIQUIDATE MY ESTATE—I LAUGH—FAULTY ARITHMETIC—I SEEK—WHAT?
ENVY disguised itself as hostility. My friends insinuated, laughed, mocked. An old woman, whom I had befriended for a long while, refused to accept the silver coin that I was in the habit of offering her.
“Have you become so rich, good woman?”
She shook her head.
“Do you need more, perhaps?”
“I need God’s alms, not the Devil’s.”
“What do you mean?”
She glared at me, and ran off.
The gay women who used to accost me, shrank away at my approach. No doubt Aurelia had spoiled my reputation in the demimonde of Jerusalem.
I visited another physician for some trifling disorder. He hardly listened to me. “All diseases are curable, provided the patient lives long enough to overcome the initial cause of the complaint. You, Captain, can overcome all diseases.”
I was on the point of drawing my sword, but stopped, reflecting that the murder of the physician would require a longer explanation than I could afford to offer. I laughed. “Here is a gold coin, leech. You are a philosopher.”
The beard I raised only emphasized my youthful appearance. I shaved it off.
I lived alone. My only servants were two country boors, morose and taciturn. I realized that before long popular envy against me would burst out, like a volcano. What would happen to me, whether I could really be killed or hurt, I did not know. But I was certain that it would be unpleasant. I liquidated my estates, a matter which I already found very difficult to accomplish, resigned my position in the Roman army, and left the city on horseback.
The sea was like a vast liquid jewel. I walked up and down the deck of the boat, thinking of Lydia. For a long time now she had disappeared from my memory, and I felt a pang of conscience for this neglect. I laughed. My very name predisposes me to laughter. Isaac is Hebrew for laughter. Nevertheless, my laughter startled me. I understood, as if by some revelation, that laughter was to be my weapon from now on—to laugh and forget, much and quickly.
The boat was crowded with people of many nationalities. Suddenly a tall, thin man exclaimed in a Latin tinged with the accent of some Oriental tongue, “He is the Messiah! He is the Christ!” He stopped, looked upward, and made a gesture with his right hand, first horizontally, then vertically. His enormous Adam’s apple moved up and down as if the shock of
his voice continued to stimulate its activity.
“He died upon the Cross; three days later He was resurrected, and rose to Heaven.” Some nodded, and made the same curious gesture with their hands. Others smiled. “All who believe in Him shall live forever, for His death was an atonement for our sins.”
“Did you know Jesus?” I asked.
“How could I know Him since He was crucified thirty-nine years ago? I am only thirty-two.”
“Thirty-nine? That must be an error. It’s only thirty-four.”
He shook his head. “Thirty-nine.”
Jesus was becoming a legend.
“Tell me—have you heard of a man by the name of Cartaphilus, known among the Jews as Isaac Laquedem?”
“Cartaphilus, the cursed one!” he exclaimed. “He must tarry on earth until the Master returns!”
“And where is this Cartaphilus—the cursed one?”
“Who knows? He must be roaming about, like a starved beast, seeking the Master.”
‘Like a starved beast seeking…’ It was true. When I left Jerusalem, I thought I was merely fleeing for safety. But I realized now, because of the remark of this tall man, with an extraordinary Adam’s apple, that there was a deeper meaning in my pilgrimage. Seeking—but what and whom?
I began to walk once more up and down the deck. I thought of John—gentle and handsome youth, as I knew him—and of our great friendship. I thought of Mary—of her magnificent body, of our passionate embraces. It was so long ago! They had become characters, more or less fabulous, in a greater fable. The hundreds of people I had known, and the many women I had possessed—all were shadows now that had merely crossed my path. These two alone were real.
VIII: I ARRIVE IN ROME—I TEMPT THE GODS AND—SNEEZE—I TRANSLATE NERO’S POEMS—MY FIRST AMOUR WITH AN EMPRESS—I AM EMBARRASSED—”HOW STRONG YOU ARE CARTAPHILUS”
I ARRIVED in Rome just as the sun was setting. Its immense reflection in the Tiber resembled a great conflagration.
I was walking slowly along the shore, analyzing a half dozen emotions that besieged me, when I heard a piercing cry. “Help! Help! Help! “
The mock fire upon the river rose into tongues of flame as a boy beat the water desperately. Several people rushed to the spot. A woman pulled one, then another, by the toga. “Save him! Save him! My son! Save him!”
“I cannot swim.”
“The Tiber is too rough. It will swallow us both.”
“Save him! My son! Help! Help!”
‘You are eternal, are you not?’ a voice distant, extraneous, as of another person, rang in my ears. ‘Prove it now!’
‘I cannot swim,’ I answered.
‘That’s just the reason… Tempt fate!’
I made a motion as if to disengage myself from an invisible hand.
‘Prove that your life is inviolate!’
I meant to continue my walk. What strange power then, hurled me suddenly, dressed as I was, and against my will, into the river? By what stranger instinct did I find myself swimming, when I had never swum before?
I caught the boy, just as he was sinking, and held him in one arm; with the other I beat the water. The Tiber pulled at my body like a great iron weight. I beat it, as one beats a living enemy—a wild beast.
A fisherman’s boat arrived. I felt a power pull me upward. The great iron weight became light. I heard a shout—and then,—a long silence.
I opened my eyes. My lids were a little heavy. I tried to keep them from pasting together again. A man was bending over me. I sneezed in his face. He remained grave and unperturbed. Wiping his face, he said: “Only a cold. A few days of rest, and this drug both for him and the boy.”
I noticed then that he was talking to a man and a woman, standing in back of him. In the opposite corner, a child coughed. I realized that I was in the home of the boy I had saved from drowning. If immune from death, I was nevertheless susceptible to colds.
For weeks I was the guest of Lavinius, an enormously wealthy patrician. He introduced me to the Imperator. I translated Nero’s poems into Hebrew and Chaldean and gained his favor by flattery. I was prejudiced against the Imperator because his face was red and covered with pimples, but I was fascinated by the Empress Poppaea. Was it her finely etched nose, was it her lips, indented at each corner, making two exquisite dimples, was it her voluptuous posture revealing the dazzling fragment of a breast that made me whisper ‘Mary’? And Sporus, the Emperor’s minion, how his large blue eyes gazed directly into the distance. ‘John!’ Was it an illusion? Was it my loneliness that invested with similitude unrelated things?
It was bruited in Rome that Poppaea was a Jewess. I do not know. Judaism was the one topic that we avoided when we exchanged confidences. Nevertheless it is possible that the consciousness of our racial consanguinity established a secret tie between myself and the Empress.
Nero, after one of his vulgar banquets reeking with drink and retching with food, disappeared in the vomitorium to relieve angry nature with the aid of a peacock feather. He did not return. The guests departed. I found myself alone with the Imperatrix. She was reclining on the sofa as was her wont, and Sporus sat at her feet. The boy, concerned about the health of his imperial Master, to whom he was deeply devoted, kissed her hand, bowed to me, and walked out.
The Empress made a sign to two slaves who were standing at the door with arms crossed, a mode learned in Egypt. Making deep obeisance the two eunuchs closed the door behind them.
Poppaea’s eyes smiled. Her lips curled like the hungry petals of a carnivorous flower. The message of her blood to mine made her silence eloquent. My blood rushed to my head.
Did she mean to accept me as her lover? Should I, Cartaphilus, the shoemaker’s son, venture to touch the Empress of the world?
Apparently Poppaea, imperial even in her love-making, preferred to make the advances. She caressed my cheek and pressed her finger-tips against my eyelids. The tumult in our blood leaped over the abyss that separated the cobbler’s son and the Empress. Poppaea drew me gently upon the couch. She caressed my body. What cruel divinity interfered? Was it too great a privilege to touch the Mistress of Rome? What secret sense of inferiority stopped the onrush of the blood? Perhaps the very aggressiveness of her passion paralyzed mine…
In a sheet of flame, yet incapable of quenching the fire, I beat my fists against the couch. My limbs trembled as if a sudden spell had been cast upon them. Impotent to break the ensorcelment, I cursed in Hebrew and in Latin. I raged against myself, but my wrath was of no avail. Flushed and ashamed, I whispered, “Poppaea, Poppaea, I do not understand.”
She made no answer. Her eyes glistened. Her teeth clenched. The futility of my gestures became tiresome and, no doubt, ridiculous, for suddenly she burst into laughter.
Her laughter unleashed wild beasts in my bosom.
White with anger, no longer master of myself, I struck her brutally across her imperial mouth. I grasped her arms roughly, leaving upon them, like wounds, the imprint of my hand. My passion, expending itself in fury, I shouted obscene insults. Poppaea’s bosom shook, but no longer with laughter.
“Strike me, Cartaphilus, strike hard! “
She groaned, her eyes closed, her mouth opened.
A drop of blood, falling upon my hand like a red petal, brought me to my senses. “Forgive me, Poppaea.” The features of the Imperatrix relaxed. She opened her eyes.
“Cartaphilus, I love you.” Her voice was unexpectedly strident.
“Hurt me, crush me,” she gasped.
I rushed out of the palace. The night was cool, the stars hung in thick clusters like grapes. To my left I could hear the Tiber beat softly against the shores like a dog lapping.
The tempest aroused by the Empress raged in my brain for hours after I had reached my home.
My slave, a young girl from Damascus, brought in my night-robes.
“Wine!” I commanded. When she brought the wine, I ordered her to remain. She trembled. She had never seen me in such a mood.
“Whatever pleases my master, pleases me.”
It was already morning, when the slave, exhausted, placed her head upon my chest.
“How strong you are, Cartaphilus!”
‘If Poppaea could only hear you,’ I thought.
“When you rise, my child, you are a free woman.”
“I don’t want to be a free woman. I want to be your slave.”
She fell asleep. Her regular breathing lulled me to sleep as well. The sun was high overhead when we rose.
IX: SPORUS MISUNDERSTANDS—NERO FIDDLES—I BLAME THE NAZARENES
THE Imperator was draping the folds of his robe when I entered. He received me cordially. “Look, Cartaphilus, is this perfect?”
“It is the fold of the statue of a god carved by a master.”
The guests were coming, generally by twos or threes. Nero continued to fix the folds, now and then raising his eyes to notice the effect it produced on the visitors, who seemed entranced.
His arm tired, he seated himself.
We spoke of various matters. The conversation drifted finally to architecture which interested him greatly.
“Alas,” the Emperor remarked moodily, “the Romans prefer to keep their old wooden shanties instead of building magnificent structures of stone and marble. Rome… Rome…the city of lumber! I love stone, Cartaphilus. Eternity lingers in stone. If I had it my way, I would burn Rome and rebuild it…make it a thing of perfect beauty.”
He drank deeply out of his cup as if to drown his regret, and smacked his heavy lips.
Sporus walked out, slim, graceful, cat-like. He was not drunk, but the intoxication of the Imperator had communicated itself to him. His eyes were like torches. At the door, he motioned to three soldiers to follow him. The Imperator did not notice his departure. Poppaea feigned sleepiness to disguise her boredom. The guests were becoming noisy. Their conversation rose and fell like the din of giant insects. Some couples upon the floor interlaced in amorous postures. A few sang. I was weary, and should have gladly taken leave, but the Emperor continued to speak of architecture, of beauty, and of beastly landlords, interested solely in their investments.
[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew Page 6
