My First Two Thousand Years; the Autobiography of the Wandering Jew

by George Sylvester Viereck

  ‘Yes, Princess, but even the bee must possess the conceit of his ability to fly high…high…until his wings touch the tips of the Queen’s wings. Strength is conscious of itself.’

  The door opened, and a very tall and powerful man, whose face was veiled, entered, accompanied on either side by a lady-in-waiting of the Princess. I stopped them. One of the women placed her forefinger to her lips, whispering: “The Princess commands.”

  They broke the wide reflection of the moon which flooded the room, and entered into the royal bedchamber.

  Who was this man? What was the meaning of this intrusion? My plans were crushed under his feet, as a delicate vase under the paws of an elephant.

  Meanwhile, the women walked in and out of the room, carrying delicacies, wines, spices, perfumes. To my inquiries, they whispered mysteriously: “The Princess commands.”

  Someone played upon the harp a sensuous, languorous melody, and another danced.

  The feet that stamped upon the floor, trod upon my heart.

  Who was this man? What mighty prince? What youth of unconquerable beauty? I looked at myself in the mirror and saw a face, ugly and commonplace, crowned with an enormously Jewish nose.

  ‘Cartaphilus, you were vain indeed to believe yourself the glorious king who conquers the Queen! You are but an insignificant captain, a shoemaker’s son, a Jew!’

  The entire night the revelry continued, alternating between laughter and music and dancing, and vague amorous whispers and groans which I could hear as I pressed my ear against the door.

  Again and again I was on the point of dashing into the room, of shouting epithets of abomination and of piercing to the hilt of my sword the body of Salome.

  The rays of the sun, like long fingers, caressed the powerful legs of the royal throne. I looked in the mirror. A haggard, drawn face stared back at me. Even my wildest debauches had never left me so completely bedraggled.

  The door of the royal bedchamber opened cautiously. Was it Salome? Had she come to atone for her intolerable cruelty? Had everything been merely a nightmare and an illusion? Was she ready for the nuptial flight, for the honeymoon in the clouds?

  The tall man, who had entered the previous evening, appeared upon the threshold. Was this an illusion indeed? Was he the magnificent prince, the chosen one of Salome,—a Nubian, black as charcoal, heavy-featured, and colossally muscled like a giant bull!

  I drew my sword. “Halt!” I commanded. A woman in back of him, placed her forefinger to her lips: “The Princess commands.” I replaced the sword into the scabbard, and motioned to him to pursue his way. “What subtle means have conquered an exquisite love, 0 Princess?” I asked aloud.

  It seemed to me I heard someone laugh.

  “Daughter of Night and of Evil!” I shouted, and rushed out.

  VI: MY FIRST MARRIAGE—PROCLA ASKS A QUESTION—THE DESPERATION OF LYDIA—THE CURIOUS HETAERA—I CONSULT A LEECH

  LYDIA was a mother to me—a young and desirable mother. She was a slave to my whims. I married her. I tried to persuade myself that it was merely gratitude, although I knew very well that such a sentiment was foreign to me. What I really wished was to force myself by an outward symbol to lead a normal existence. I wished to be able to say to myself: ‘Cartaphilus, forget—forget whatever preceded Lydia, forget John, forget Mary, forget the eyes of Jesus and forget Salome.”

  I wanted children to rediscover myself in them, fresh and pure. I wished to drown the voice that tormented my nerves, with their laughter and noises. But the years passed, and no children came. Lydia, fearing that it was her fault, prayed in the various temples, took drugs, fasted, consulted oracles.

  I felt the need of ceaseless occupation. I engaged in many business ventures, in most of which, by dint of hard work, I succeeded. I became wealthy. I lived in luxury, and for some years, at any rate, I was considered one of the principal citizens of Jerusalem. To Romans I was a Roman. The Jews, except in the most orthodox circles, were grateful, because unlike others who had forsaken the fold, I did not persecute them.

  John and Mary had vanished. My inquiries and searches were all futile. The followers of Jesus were not numerous enough to attract attention, and they remained unmolested.

  Pilate returned to Rome. He had grown old, and bored even with Ovid and with his wife. Whether he really committed suicide afterward, as the rumor had it, or not, I cannot tell. At any rate, I never saw him again. Procla kissed me goodbye.

  “Cartaphilus, what is the secret of your youth?”

  “My wife’s cooking. She is without equal.” I laughed.

  “You jest. This is your habit now with me. Is it because I am getting old? With old ladies one jests; with young ones one sighs. You used to love me once, Cartaphilus.”

  “I love you still, Procla.”

  “How can you? I look like your grandmother.”

  “You are beautiful.”

  “There is nothing more pathetic—and more futile—than being beautiful, but old. I would rather be very homely, and young. What makes you so youthful, Cartaphilus? Is it a racial characteristic? Romans who lead so gay a life would be bald and stout like poor Pilate, and complain, like him, of rheumatism…but you…you have not changed one particle all these years… What is your secret…?”

  “You exaggerate my youth, I am sure; and moreover, you exaggerate your age.”

  She sighed. “Farewell, Cartaphilus. It is no longer in my power to persuade men. Farewell.”

  This was the first time that any one mentioned to me the suspicion that I possessed the secret of youth. Like a brazen drum the words: ‘Thou shalt tarry until I return’ re-echoed in my ears. Had Jesus, by some curious magic, some incomprehensible trick, stopped the flow of sand in the hour-glass for me? Was my body secure from the assaults of age?

  I had strangled my own suspicions. Suddenly, however, it was borne upon me that the words of Jesus or some other thing had wrought in me a curious transformation that made me different from other men. For the first time I seriously reconsidered the strange spell he had pronounced upon me.

  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 g
old.

  “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 ref
lection 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.