[The Wandering Jew 1] - My First Two Thousand Years the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew

by Viereck, George Sylvester

  I remembered my experience with Poppaea. Had Don Juan failed to be—Don Juan?

  “Perhaps, señor,” I suggested, “you were distracted by something or other?”

  “Perhaps. The fool Fernando came into my mind again and again, I do not wish to kill him. Why did he act like an idiot?”

  “Is it really so important if he continues to live or not?”

  He looked at me. “No! To the devil with him!” he shouted.

  He walked up and down, his hands upon his back.

  “And that Jewess has disturbed my thoughts. She is a virgin too—like all young Jewesses. But she cannot be so stupid! Besides, she is beautiful. How can such an abominable race produce such an exquisite creature, señor?”

  “The roots of roses are set deeply in the mud.”

  “That is true, señor. She is a rose. Her roots are in the—Ghetto.”

  Kotikokura opened and shut his fists, grumbling: “Woman” from time to time.

  “She is protected like a king’s treasure. My very name is sufficient to alarm all Jews.”

  Don Juan resumed his walking. His shoes glittered like golden mirrors every time he broke the reflection of the sun, while his temples shone like thinly hidden ivory.

  “Are the women of your country, señor, also mainly foxes and geese?”

  “I have traveled in many lands, Don Juan, and have known women of all races and of all colors. Everywhere man complains against them. Woman has been compared to all creatures, wild or tamed, and still has not been explained.”

  He looked at me, placing his hand upon his hip and closing a little his eyes. “Señor, from the first glance, I recognized in you a kindred soul.”

  I bowed.

  “You seek, evidently, as I do, the ultimate– —”

  “Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged, Don Juan.”

  “Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged,” he repeated. “That is it! This is what I have been seeking. To know what one seeks is as difficult at times as to find it. Señor, you have the lasting gratitude of Don Juan. I swear it by the sword and the cross!” He touched both.

  He muttered to himself, “Unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged! But señor, I forget the seconds of Don Fernando must be waiting for me at my home. May I ask you to be my guest?” Looking up at Kotikokura, “My guests, gentlemen, for the rest of your sojourn in Córdoba.”

  We bowed. I thanked him.

  “The air here is stifling, putrid.” He screwed up his nose. He reminded me at that moment of an oversensitive and fastidious young woman.

  Don Juan’s mansion was a neo-Moorish building, situated upon the bank of the Guadalquivir. A rectangular garden in which the flowers and trees were arranged with mathematical precision surrounded it on all sides, so that only the upper part of the house was visible when approached.

  “I hate irregularity and disorder,” he told me. “I prefer to dominate nature and arrange the colors and sizes of my flowers in a harmony which pleases my eye. But I suppose this is due to my masculine temperament. I am logical in all things.”

  This regularity, on the contrary, struck me as profoundly feminine. It seemed to me more like the fussiness of an old maid. Two male servants helped us with our clothing. A third one prepared food.

  “Even my servants are men. I cannot endure the whimsicality of women in my domestic environment.”

  The walls were covered with swords, weapons, heads of wild boars and other mementoes of Don Juan’s masculine prowess. Two small parrots screeched “Bienvenido,” ceaselessly. Several tiny birds in cages flapped their wings, warbling and whistling.

  Don Juan invited me to sit at the table. Kotikokura, a large jug of wine between his knees, seated himself in front of the fireplace.

  “A friend of mine,” remarked Don Juan, “a young poet, has expressed my life in a poem. This poem shall be my epitaph.

  “At the flutter of my wings

  The breezes quivered,

  And a thousand flowers unclasped

  Their honeyed treasures.

  Alas! I died of sheer despair

  And lonesomeness

  In the golden chalice of a rose.”

  “And a thousand women were unable to dispel your gloom, Don Juan?”

  “Only while their embraces lasted, and frequently not as long. A thousand women… What does it mean, señor? One obliterates the memory of the other, leaving us empty-handed. A man always says: ‘This one is different. This one’s lips will burn the flesh and touch the soul.’—But they hardly scorch the skin.”

  “Woman is an attitude,” I replied, repeating my remark to Kotikokura. “It all depends upon what one seeks in her and how much one is willing to forgive in advance.”

  Don Juan drank another cup. His face flushed. “I do not know what I seek in her, my friend. Love is only a method to vanquish boredom…”

  “Our lives are so short, Don Juan! Have we time to be bored?”

  Kotikokura grinned.

  “The gods have mocked us with an unspeakable mockery, señor,” Don Juan replied, “by making the temple of Eros an accessory of the cloaca. Only drink and the caress of a thousand women can make us forget the disgust and the indignity.”

  “Should not a great lover, Don Juan, overcome this fastidiousness—defeat the gods and their mockery, and discover beauty precisely where they had meant to create ugliness?”

  He knit his brows and looked at me intently. “What man can do that?”

  “I have done it, Don Juan.”

  He smiled a little bitterly, a little ironically. “Señor, if you have done that, then you are the Supreme Lover of all time—and not Don Juan!”

  I smiled. ‘How often we speak the truth unwittingly.’ I thought. Was I more fortunate than Don Juan merely because I lived longer? Had Nature afforded me such an abundance of life, such torrents of vitality, that all the dikes of ugliness were swept away, and the fresh waters of beauty flooded my being?

  “Perhaps,” I said, “if our lives were stretched out for centuries, Don Juan, we might discover the secret of outwitting the irony of the gods.”

  “What an incalculable boredom would overwhelm us then, señor! We might have to possess a million women—and still remain unassuaged.”

  A servant whispered into Don Juan’s ear that the seconds had arrived.

  The seconds brought word that any attempt to effect a reconciliation would be futile. Fernando refused to apologize. After they were gone, Don Juan waved his fist. “The idiot! The idiot! He wants to die! He has seen me engaged in many duels. I never received a scar, señor,—never! He has never fought except in play. He was always so gentle and amenable—more delicate than his sister! What mania women have for confessing! Had she kept still about it, her brother would not be dead tomorrow! Ah, let us drink, señor… The world’s a cackling hen.”

  We drank one another’s health. With every additional cup, Don Juan became more melancholy. I had long ago observed that drink brings forth our true personality which, like a too passionate virgin, is locked within the castle of our beings. Drink is a daring Knight Errant who climbs the tall wall and descends a rope, carrying in his arms our secret.

  Don Juan was a gentle lamb, bleating sadly—not a roaring lion of love.

  Don Juan sighed. “I do not know why I tell you all this, señor,” he said. “It is but the second day I have seen you. Never before have I spoken so freely– —”

  “I appreciate your confidence, señor.”

  The servant whispered something into Don Juan’s ear.

  “No, no—not today.”

  The servant seemed reluctant to go.

  “Not today,” Don Juan shouted. “To the devil with her!”

  The servant left.

  “The amiable Countess expects me.”

  He laughed suddenly. “I poisoned two dogs, bribed a half dozen servants, and nearly broke my neck climbing into her room. Besides, her husband is a favorite of the King. I jeopardized my head to go
with her through the absurd motions of conjugation. Why did I risk so much? Señor, she has a beauty spot on her left breast… A tiny spot the size of a pinhead. It is really a blemish, an imperfection of the skin,—yet it promised so much!… I assure you, señor, she was not one bit different from all the others. I should have known!… She was my nine hundred and ninety-seventh.”

  “Pardon me, Don Juan, but is it really possible to keep an exact record of every amour?”

  He laughed. “I have an album, señor, in which I put the initials and the number of each woman with a few remarks, generally of a depreciating nature—too fat, too thin, too white, too dark, too insistent, too cold, bored me at the critical moment, reminded me of a parrot, a dog, a cat. Also the difficulties encountered—the duels fought, the husbands duped, etc., etc.”

  “A strange document which will be of value to posterity,” I remarked.

  Don Juan smiled, pleased.

  “Many a poet will compose sonnets to the world’s master lover…”

  “But señor,—I have never loved.”

  “What!” I exclaimed.

  “Love…love…what is love?”

  “Not even the first woman who unlocked for you the sweet gateway of love…?”

  He shook his head. “Not even the first.”

  He seemed like a child with countless toys, enjoying none, stamping upon them, casting them aside, bored and irritated.

  I too had experimented with many passions. I, too, had experienced the chill of a frozen kiss. But in spite of it, were there not Mary and Salome and Ulrica and Lydia and Damis and John? I had loved them! They had touched, in one way or another, my soul, leaving upon my memory the imprint of their exquisite loveliness. I had loved! I had not lived in vain! Why had Don Juan never loved?

  Kotikokura, his eyes heavy, grinned constantly like a statue of mockery.

  “Señor, my friend,” Don Juan said suddenly, “you have mentioned unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged. The phrase sticks in my brain like an arrow.”

  “Yes,” I said vaguely.

  “What does it mean? Is it acquired by one of the drugs that the Crusaders have brought from the East, or the Moors from China? I have experimented with all. I have applied them externally; leeches have injected them into my blood; I emptied deep phials. The poppy whose sap I consumed never made me experience unendurable pleasure, or if it seemed unendurable, it was never indefinitely prolonged.”

  “It is not the poppy, not a drug, señor. Drugs, like apothecary’s scales, weigh minutely their pleasures, demanding in return either an equal amount of pain or a diminution of capacity.”

  “Not a drug?” He placed his elbows upon the table and looked at me closely. I remained silent.

  “Señor, I swear by the cross that if it is a secret, I shall keep it until I am dust within the dust. Don Juan never breaks his promise—to a man.”

  “Don Juan, unendurable pleasure indefinitely prolonged is possible only for him who loves—woman.”

  He stared at me.

  “It is neither a drug nor an incantation, but a long and profound study, a gradual training, until the senses perceive with the clarity of an eye, a third eye, an eye that pierces like a sharp tool. It transmutes the body into a conflagration… It turns the vulgar metal to gold…”

  Don Juan, his lips parted and brows knit, listened. “Such knowledge, however, Don Juan, is only for the elect, for those who truly love—woman.”

  “Señor,” he said, slightly irritably, “this is the second time you have mentioned the fact that one must love woman. I do not understand.”

  “Don Juan, is it the truth you seek or polite conversation?”

  After a pause, he said a little hoarsely, “From you—the truth.”

  “The truth, Don Juan, as it appears to me. Naturally, I may be wrong.”

  He nodded.

  “Don Juan, you do not love woman.”

  “I have told you that myself.”

  “You said it without realizing the significance of your confession.”

  “What is the significance of my words?”

  “You do not love woman, or else you would not pursue her with such vehemence—and bravado. Each new conquest is proclaimed to the world. Don Juan has captured one more! Everybody smiles, admires, and envies. If you loved woman, you would concentrate, would rejoice in the pleasure afforded by one, not in the conquest of many. Your multiple amours are merely an attempt to seek refuge from your own disgust…”

  Don Juan breathed heavily and tightened his fist around the cup.

  “Shall I continue?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I realized that what I was about to say would strike him as a dagger, Why did I not turn the conversation into another channel? It was still possible. Why did I desire to hurt this man? Was it simply to notice his reaction, to convince myself that my surmise was correct,—or was it perhaps a secret resentment against the enemy of my race…?

  “You do not love woman,” I insisted, like a prophet of evil. “Your amorous conquests rise from the endeavor to convince both yourself and the world that you are capable of loving her, that there is neither a spiritual nor physical deficiency in you…”

  “Whom do I love, if not woman…?” he asked, standing up and glaring at me.

  “You have asked me for the truth, señor,” I said quietly.

  “I beg your pardon.” He reseated himself. “I do not know why I should be exasperated. You simply repeat what I told you myself, that I have not loved any woman.”

  I smiled. “Nothing exasperates us so much, señor, as the truth, particularly if we try to conceal it from ourselves…”

  We remained silent for some time. Don Juan made small circles with his cup. The parrots screeched: “Bienvenido” from time to time drowning the exquisite music of the other birds.

  “Señor, whom do I love, if not woman?” he asked.

  “Perhaps no one now, but at one time—long ago—had you obeyed your nature, you would have preferred– —”

  “What?”

  “Narcissus-like, you were enamoured of yourself, or the image of yourself—in another man…!”

  He burst into a hearty laugh but stopped short. “A man! Señor, what a jest! I am the most manly man of Spain, not an effeminate fop. Look at my arms! Touch the muscle! It is iron, señor!”

  “Your eternal insistence upon your masculinity proves that you are not sure of yourself…”

  “It is man’s prerogative to be proud of his manhood…”

  “When one is certain of it, it is unnecessary for him to emphasize its existence.”

  “Señor,” he shouted, “you presume too much…”

  “I merely obeyed your desire for my opinion…”

  “That is right. Forgive me. I am an ungracious host.”

  I bowed.

  “But what proof have you, señor, for your fantastic assertion?”

  “Why are you so upset about Don Fernando, señor? Is he the first man you have killed in a duel…?”

  “He is so young…”

  “Is he the youngest you have ever fought…?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then…”

  “He was my friend…”

  “And he resembles his sister as two drops of water resemble each other.”

  “How do you know, señor?”

  “Everybody in Córdoba knows it.”

  “Supposing that were true,—what bearing has it upon your preposterous statement?”

  “You would rather kill the sister than the boy…?”

  “Even if that were true, what then…?”

  “Don Juan, if you dared to look into your soul, you would see there…that you made love to the sister to escape from the brother… You love the man, not the woman.”

  “Señor!” he shouted, and struck the table a powerful blow.

  Kotikokura awakened with a start. Don Juan was about to strike the table again when Kotikokura jumped forward and grasped his arm
.

  “How dare you!” Don Juan shouted. I made no sign. Kotikokura released his arm.

  “Don Juan,” I said, “if a guest’s opinion so upsets his host, it is best for the guest to withdraw.”

  He became almost sentimental. “Forgive me, señor. Wine and the harrowing experiences of the day paralyze my understanding, and crush the instinctive hospitality of a Spanish gentleman. I beg you not to go.” He stretched out his hand which I shook.

  He clapped his hands. A servant entered.

  “Jaime, go fetch Mahmud the Moor and his band. Tell him to bring a few dancers, men and women. Tonight we dine in the garden and make merry in honor of our guests.”

  The servant left.

  Don Juan laughed, slapping his thighs. “Señor, you are magnificent! What you said was almost convincing. Your sense of humor is as keen as a blade. Your love of paradox is delightful. I am very fortunate to have met you.” Turning to Kotikokura, “And you, señor—your fist is more powerful than steel. You nearly broke my arm. I congratulate you. One more cup, gentlemen, to our most catholic King and to—Woman!”

  We drank. Don Juan recounted gallant anecdotes and amorous escapades. He laughed uproariously, but his eyes were melancholy and distracted.

  The field of honor was a secluded spot on the outskirts of Córdoba. We drove in silence. Don Juan’s face was drawn. The two long wrinkles on either cheek dug deep channels. The white spot upon his forehead appeared and disappeared at intervals. He kept his eyes closed. I knew that his fatigue was not due to the previous night’s revelry—a very simple affair—but to my words which had been sharper and had struck deeper than the sword thrusts he was wont to administer to his adversaries.

  I regretted having spoken. A mere mortal cannot endure the truth, uncoated with the sweets of illusion. It was too late to undo the harm. I had a premonition that Don Juan’s last day had come.

  Don Fernando and his seconds were waiting for us. The young man pretended a nonchalance out of harmony with the trembling of his body which he attributed to the morning chill. Don Juan scrutinized him, neither as an enemy nor as a friend, but as if endeavoring to discover whether what I had told him was true or false. He breathed deeply. Both the strange, affectionate attitude and the fury he had exhibited at their previous meeting, had disappeared. The lassitude of complete disillusionment possessed the great lover.