[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew
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“Has he been a source of displeasure to you?”
“He was too faithful to you!”
“He is as a brother to me.”
“No brother is half so faithful.”
“Kotikokura,” I called.
He came in.
“Kneel before Salome, she is your mistress while she remains with us.”
He knelt. Salome bade him rise, and gave him her hand to kiss.
“We shall leave by my secret exit, Cartaphilus, which leads to a road unknown even to Kotikokura. Three camels are waiting for us behind a cluster of trees.”
“And my parrot, who has been screeching ‘Carr-tarr-pharr’…ever since I entered the palace?”
“The Sacred Parrot can remain here, to remind the people of Catapha.” She laughed a little sarcastically.
“Is Ca-ta-pha inferior to other gods?” I asked.
“Few in the profession are his superiors,” she answered.
“Then why did you wish to depose him?”
“I am weary of men-gods.”
“Is not God always…man?”
“The womb of woman gives birth to man!”
“Perhaps God is both man and woman in one…” I suggested.
“Cartaphilus, at least, is a master of gallantry.”
She touched my hand gently. I was too delighted to discuss gods or creeds.
XLIII: THREE IMMORTALS RIDE THROUGH THE DESERT—SLAVES OF THE MOON—CONFESSIONS—KOTIKOKURA PLAYS ON A REED
OUR camels rocked like tall weird boats, shaken by a sea slightly ruffled. Salome rode at my left, and Kotikokura behind us. The sky seemed like a luminous desert covered with stars instead of sand.
Salome chuckled a little.
“The Queen is amused?” I asked.
“Somewhat.”
“By what?”
“By Ca-ta-pha, Kotikokura, and Salome,—the three immortals, riding together into the desert.”
We rode in silence for some time.
“Did you think that a nation ruled by women could maintain itself permanently?” I asked.
“Why not?”
“Man’s rule is based on the laws of nature…”
“Cartaphilus,” she exclaimed, “you are incorrigible! Woman was the first ruler. Her rule was before man’s, whatever legends man may devise to soothe his vanity.”
“I am humble, Salome.”
She laughed. “Cartaphilus humble!” Her teeth glittered, her curls struck lightly her checks. Sparks seemed to dance from the fire within her eyes.
“Cartaphilus is vain only because Salome rides at his side.”
“I do not deny that you are gallant, Cartaphilus, and however childish flattery may be, I cannot but be pleased by it. Alas, I am a woman.”
“Alas?”
“Yes, for you are right, after all. Woman must remain man’s inferior while she is enslaved by her body.”
“Oh!”
“She is the mother, the bearer of progeny. Even when her organism is not engaged in the function of reproducing the race, she is weakened by the rhythm of her purification. As the moon waxes and wanes, nature draws the blood from her brain into the organs of procreation. Every month she gives birth to a bud destined in most cases never to blossom. Every month her body goes through the agony of childbirth without child. Man is free to go his way. She is the slave of the moon!…”
“Many of your women, Salome, seemed more robust and more capable than the men.”
“Those women, alas, are neither women nor men, they are a disinherited sex. Even they are pleased to be slaves once more. Had I remained among them for many generations—I could have established a new type perhaps—but I was bored. Like Cartaphilus, I feel the irresistible urge of wandering. If I had really desired to remain Queen of the Land of the Sacred Parrot, I would not have been overthrown.”
“Even your women were enraged because you violated their most holy traditions.”
Salome laughed.
“You are referring to my refusal to sleep for a week with the corpse of one of my husbands…?”
“Yes.”
“That would have been a little uncomfortable, of course, but it would have been easy to make the situation tolerable by the use of a little magic… Cartaphilus ought to know… He is a god.”
I laughed in my turn.
“What a curious notion this, to sleep with a dead man, and gather the worms of the corpse!”
“Not so curious, Cartaphilus. A little disgusting, no doubt, but quite rational. Is not the soul supposed to lodge within the body?”
“Such seems to be the essence of most creeds.”
“Man attempts to preserve the soul…”
“Undoubtedly—he even preserves the ashes of the dead.”
“There is more life in the worms than in the ashes that he guards with such care. Their writhing persuades the savage mind that the soul is a living reality. It continues to live in the worm! Man, Cartaphilus, is always logical. Whatever he does, proceeds from reason. The customs of your people, while nasty, are logical.” She laughed ironically.
“And life,” I replied, “continues to remain beyond logic and reason,—a whimsical thing, wriggling its thumb upon its nose and laughing uproariously.”
“How very true, Cartaphilus.”
Kotikokura laughed, slapping his thighs.
“Why do you laugh, Kotikokura?” I asked, turning around.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“What makes you so merry, my friend?”
He continued to shrug his shoulders.
Salome smiled, her eyes half closed. Was she thinking of the time when she had rejected me for Kotikokura?
Salome laughed a little.
“Cartaphilus still is angry at me a little.”
“How shall he hide his emotions before Salome? It may be true, he may be a little angry, or a little sorry…but he is happy that Salome rides at his side.”
The stars were dimming like old eyes covered with thin cataracts. Salome yawned and laughed. “Salome must yawn now and then, Cartaphilus. Sleep is another form of slavery.”
“Kotikokura,” I called, “the Queen is weary. Raise the tent, that she may sleep quietly within it, and not be disturbed by the Sun, when that great Slaughterer of Dreams stamps his golden feet upon the sand.”
Salome stretched out her arms. I helped her descend from the camel. Her hands were small and white, as a child’s almost. I kissed and caressed them.
“The desert makes us sentimental. The realization of our cosmic insignificance stirs pity in us, and creates new measures of values, purely human. We become important to one another, when we no longer matter to the universe.”
“Yes, Cartaphilus. Besides, are we not both children of that strange race, most bitter and ironic, and yet how sentimental?”
We watched Kotikokura arrange the tent.
“And who is Kotikokura?” I whispered. “Is he perhaps also one of us,—a scion of the Lost Tribe?”
“He is the link that unites man to animal, Cartaphilus. He is yourself, perhaps, as you were a thousand generations ago…”
“I love him, Salome.”
“I have vainly sought a woman companion like him! I tried to discover one whose blood could mingle with mine…”
“Is your blood, too, poison to others?”
She nodded.
“Some day,” she added, “I may find a vessel strong enough to bear life of my life.”
“A blossom of your own body?”
She shook her head.
Kotikokura grinned and clapped his hands. The tent was ready. I wished Salome happy dreams, and withdrew.
Kotikokura stretched out beside me.
“Are you sorry that you are no longer the High Priest of Ca-ta-pha?”
“Kotikokura always High Priest of Ca-ta-pha.”
“Tell me, are you not curious to know where Ca-ta-pha has been these many years, and what he did?”
“Ca-ta-pha was in Heaven.”
“In Heaven?”
He nodded.
“Don’t you remember the time we were both shipwrecked?”
He nodded.
“And you believe that Ca-ta-pha went to Heaven?”
He nodded vigorously.
“Who carried him to Heaven?”
“Ca-ta-pha is God.”
“And how did you get back to Africa?”
“Ca-ta-pha carried me.”
I meditated on the curious mechanism of the human mind.
“Oh, by the way, Kotikokura, what became of the belt I gave you? There were enough precious stones within it to purchase a caliphate.”
Kotikokura laughed a little, like a small dog barking, and pointed to his waist.
“You still have it?”
He explained how he showed the belt to his tribesmen as a proof that Ca-ta-pha had sent him to be his High Priest. The belt remained on the altar. Anyone but himself touching it, died. But since Ca-ta-pha had come in person, it was no longer necessary to leave it there. Besides, the sacred parrot would remind the worshipers of their God.
“Kotikokura, you are too subtle for an honest man!” I exclaimed.
He laughed.
“Tell me, did anyone ever touch the belt and die?”
He nodded.
“How did he die?”
He made a motion which indicated that he had strangled him.
“Did anyone see you do it?”
He shook his head.
“Kotikokura, you are almost clever enough to be a god yourself.”
He shook his head. “Ca-ta-pha God.”
XLIV: LOVE MAGIC—PARALLEL LINES—SMOKE—SALOME SMILES
THE moon was surrounded by an immense aureole, whose reflection flooded the desert like a white sea. Salome her eyes half-closed, looked at me and smiled.
“Cartaphilus, will you forgive me for my little jest in Persia?”
I remained silent.
“Are you really still angry at me? Do not two hundred years suffice to cool a man’s ruffled vanity?”
“This time the incomparable Salome has not guessed my thoughts.”
She smiled.
“I was merely shaping in my mind a reply which would prove most convincingly that the pleasure of being with Salome atones for the ancient pain.”
“Was it really pain… ?”
I nodded.
“Are you less sensitive now, Cartaphilus?”
“Perhaps. I have lived…”
We both laughed.
“Of course, you were so young in passion! How many centuries, Cartaphilus?”
“And you?”
Kotikokura laughed.
I turned around. He was too far in back of us to hear our conversation.
“Did he always laugh so much, Cartaphilus?”
“He hardly ever laughed. It is something he has learned recently.”
“He, too, is growing up.”
The white sea of sand continued to flow in utter silence in front of us.
“Salome, were you really in Persia,—or was it illusion?”
She laughed. “Of course I was.”
“Were you in a magnificent palace, mistress of a thousand slaves, guarded by eunuchs?”
“Do you not know the power of mirrors and shadows dancing upon them? Are you not an adept in magic?”
I looked, incredulous. She patted my hands. “Cartaphilus will be a child…forever.”
“The happiest child in the world, if Princess Salome remains at his side.”
She shook her head. “No, no! That must not be.”
“Why not, Salome?”
“Cartaphilus desires most to be alone, and unhampered until he finds himself. Delve into your soul, and see if I am not right.”
I remained silent for a long while.
“Well, Cartaphilus,” she said quietly, a little sadly, “am I not right?”
“Perhaps. And yet…are we not logical companions, predestined mates, bound by one race and one fate…forever?”
“We are two parallel lines drawn very close to each other…so close indeed that no third line, however thin, could be drawn between them.”
“Will the two parallel lines ever meet?”
“Yes. In infinity.”
“Ali Hasan!” I exclaimed, “had you ever dreamed that there was so much poetry and pathos and sorrow in mathematics?”
“Who is Ali Hasan?”
“My master of mathematics, an Arab of incomparable wisdom. He died of sheer pleasure.”
“Of sheer pleasure?”
“In Damascus, that I might forget Salome, I bought a harem of a thousand women. Now and then I invited my friends. Many could not endure the delights, and died. Ali Hasan—may he sit at the right side of Mohammed—was among them.”
“And did the thousand women make you forget Salome?”
“They only intensified my yearning for her.”
She closed her eyes.
“While all the time Salome never even thought of Cartaphilus…” I said, a little bitterly.
She did not answer for some time. “We may force ourselves to forget what we dare not remember. Forgetfulness may indicate deeper depths of emotion than recollection.”
“Have you, too, reached the conclusion that there are no fixed stars in the firmament of emotion…all things are relative…everything flows…?”
“Cartaphilus!” she exclaimed “Will you never overcome your masculine conceit? Will you never understand that woman’s brain may work as subtly…or more subtly than man’s?”
“It is difficult, Salome, to overcome an idea held by hundreds of generations preceding us, and transmitted to us with the milk of our mothers.”
“Well, that shall be the mission of Salome—to overcome this idea! To combat man and his arrogance! To give woman, the great mother, justice!”
“Cartaphilus will not combat Salome!”
“Yes, always…whether he wills it or not. Man and woman are the eternal antagonists. And for this reason, too, it is best for Salome to forget Cartaphilus. It is better for the two parallel lines not to meet…save in eternity, where all things are one.”
“Kotikokura, is not Salome God, like Ca-ta-pha?”
He screwed up his nose. “Salome…female.”
“But she is wiser than Ca-ta-pha. She has discovered the great law of life, which Ali Hasan and Ca-ta-pha found after much labor,—that all things are relative, that nothing is permanent.”
Kotikokura puckered his lips, contemptuously. “Salome…woman.”
“Is not woman man’s equal?”
He shook his head.
“Is not God, perhaps, both man and woman…?”
“Ca-ta-pha is God.”
“Is not Ca-ta-pha, perhaps, both man and woman…?”
He shook his head violently.
“Kotikokura, you are the eternal ancestor in me,—aboriginal, masculine! You speak for me. Because of you, Ca-ta-pha cannot accept Salome as an equal, or woman as a god.”
He grinned.
Salome and I were sitting, our legs underneath us, upon a leopard’s skin. At a distance, Kotikokura made drawings in the sand,—heads that resembled his own, and curious libidinous symbols.
Salome filled two small ivory pipes, and offered me one. We watched in silence the smoke raise thin hands, trying to capture the moon.
“Kotikokura has developed artistic tendencies. Is it a sign of advancement, or of degeneration?”
Salome smiled. “He is passing through the various stages of human existence. Some day, he will become like Cartaphilus.”
“Salome is always slightly ironic when she speaks of Cartaphilus.”
“Irony is a shield.”
“Is Salome afraid of her own emotions? Does Cartaphilus touch her heart at all?”
“Could it be otherwise? Who, save Cartaphilus, can understand Salome?”
“Then why does she refuse to remain with him always?”
She drew vaguely at her pipe. “Are you not
afraid of ‘always,’ Cartaphilus? Do you not tremble at the very thought of it?”
“Always would be as a day with you.”
I took her hands in mine, and caressed them gently. “You are as romantic as you were in the days of Pilate, Cartaphilus…you remember, when you were my royal guard.”
“And you…are as cruel as you were then.”
“I was not cruel, Cartaphilus. I resented your air of invincible masculinity, which made you strut about like a young turkey. You were handsome and clever. But what right had you to assume that Princess Salome would accept your caresses?”…
“One evening, you smiled, and spoke of the love of bees and of flowers…of a conquest, subtle and strong… Was it so wrong to hope?”
“Had you only hoped, perhaps…”
“And in Persia?”
She laughed. “That was merely a little lesson in magic.”
She stretched out her arms underneath her head. I took the pipe out of her mouth, filled it again and replaced it between her lips
“Is it right to always torture me…always, Salome?” I asked. My words seemed to rise on the edge of the smoke, high, high.
“Am… I…torturing you…you?” Her words came down from where mine had stopped, and entered the bowl of my pipe.
“Yes…”
She chuckled.
“I love you, Salome.”
“I know…”
“Do you…love me?”
“Perhaps.”
“Say yes, Salome…for once!”
“For once, yes…yes.”
“Salome, my well-beloved!” I exclaimed, and lifting her head a little, kissed her mouth.
“Salome…your lips are more delicious than crushed honey, daintier than the perfume of violets. Salome, my love…”
Her robes disappeared suddenly, and I could not tell which gleamed the more,—the moon or her body. I embraced her rapturously, murmuring: “Salome…my love…my love… Salome.”
Our bodies mingled, merged, interpenetrated, until we were like one great marble column, inextricable.
“Do you love me, Salome?”
“Yes, Cartaphilus, I love you.”
“But you are not Salome.”
“Who am I?”
“You are… Mary Magdalene!”
She laughed a little.
“I have found you at last, Mary! And your eyes are not yours.”