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

by George Sylvester Viereck

  For several months the old fakir and I retired to a solitary villa, where he taught me many remarkable tricks. In a long life, such as mine, it was well to know things that dazzle the onlookers. I rewarded him handsomely.

  “It’s strange,” he said, “you pay to learn what I should gladly forget.”

  “That is often the case, my friend.”

  “Will you allow me to praise you, sir? You have a marvelous faculty for the art. You should continue with it.”

  “Are there better teachers than yourself?”

  “Not better, but more accomplished.”

  He mentioned several Hindu names. Then scratching his head, “But I’m thinking of another man…the greatest of them all…a Greek…but he is not a fakir like me. He is a saint. His great wisdom and the purity of his life, enabled him to perform miracles—not trifles, such as these. His name is Apollonius the Tyanean.”

  XII: APOLLONIUS OF TYANA RAISES THE DEAD—DAMIS THE FAVORITE DISCIPLE

  APOLLONIUS was not in. The door to his house being open, I entered nevertheless. A very simple home, a few pieces of furniture, Greek statuary, Hindu vases, and large piles of manuscripts. I seated myself on the floor, my legs under me, and waited. ‘You have always time to wait, Cartaphilus. You need never be in haste.’

  It was early afternoon, and the sun basked upon the threshold—a luminous, tamed serpent. I closed my eyes. Peace caressed me like a kind, smooth hand, and I was on the point of falling asleep when two young men broke the reflection of the sun, and entered the room.

  I rose and bowed.

  “I have come to see the Master. Having found the door open, I took the liberty of entering. Have I transgressed the laws of courtesy?”

  “Our master’s door is never closed, and he who seeks truth is welcome always,” answered one of the young men, motioning to me to sit down.

  We were silent for a while. “Damis, you were recounting the conversation between our Master and the prisoners.”

  “Oh, yes. He touched the arm of the thief, saying: ‘While we live, my friend, we are all prisoners, for the soul is bound to the body and suffers much.’

  “ ‘Ah,’ remarked the thief, ‘but we are not all cast into jail. Some of us live in palaces.’

  “ ‘He who builds a house,’ replied our master, ‘builds one more prison for himself. Cities are only common prisons and the earth is bound to the ocean as by a chain.’

  “ ‘Ah, but life even in prison is very sweet,’ replied the murderer, who is to be quartered tomorrow.

  “ ‘True freedom,’ replied our master, ‘consists in loving neither life nor death overmuch.’ The prisoner wept, paying no attention to his words.”

  “The people marvel at the miracles of the master but they cannot grasp his thoughts.”

  “The people clamor for miracles, not for truth.”

  “A philosophy degenerates in proportion to the number of those who embrace it.”

  “Still– —”

  “I know, my friend. You would like to go among all the nations of the earth and preach the Master’s gospel.”

  “I feel in me a great passion…a need to wander, Damis.”

  They remained silent. I watched Damis. He was fair, and his traits were delicate. If his nose had not been perfectly Hellenic, his resemblance to John would have been startling. The sun receded until only one thin strip still remained on the threshold. In a few moments, it also slipped silently off.

  Apollonius entered. He was tall and thin. His full snow-white beard, hung leisurely upon his chest. His eyes were large and black. He wore a white silk robe and a silver belt of exquisite design. Upon his left wrist he had a wide bracelet studded with a large emerald. He bowed and bade me welcome.

  “Master! Master!” some voices shouted at the door.

  Apollonius turned, unperturbed. “What is it, my friends?”

  “Master!” An elderly woman in mourning, knelt before him. A young man remained standing on the threshold, his head bent.

  “Master! Do a miracle!”

  “There are no miracles, woman.”

  “Master! Bring my daughter back to life. Only a little while ago she was talking to us, laughing, jesting, when suddenly she placed her hand upon her heart…and fell. We threw water upon her, called the physician, prayed to the gods!… She is dead, master! She is dead!”

  “Is she not happier now?”

  “No, master. She was to be married in a week. There is the young groom.”

  “Master, give life again to my bride, I beg you! We loved each other as no one ever loved.”

  The master smiled. “Do you like to be awakened rudely from a profound sleep, young man?”

  “Awaken her, awaken her, Master!”

  The woman embraced his legs. The young man knelt at the door, weeping.

  “Give me back my daughter, Master!” she sobbed.

  Apollonius meditated, his eyes half-closed, his left hand protruding from his belt. “Where is your daughter, woman?” he asked at last.

  “She is in the cart, outside, Master,” the young man answered.

  “Bring her in!”

  The corpse was brought in.

  Apollonius rubbed the girl’s forehead gently and pressed her limp hands.

  The girl’s eyelids trembled; her chest heaved slightly.

  “Master! Master!” the mother exclaimed.

  Apollonius raised his forefinger, demanding silence. He continued rubbing the girl’s forehead and hands, whispering, “Awake!”

  The girl opened her eyes, and. sighed deeply.

  The people who had meanwhile gathered at the door, fell upon their faces.

  The mother and the bridegroom knelt at the sides of the resurrected girl, mumbling words of endearment. Apollonius stretched out his right hand. His voice, as he spoke, was like the cool waters of a brook, tumbling softly over stones whose edges have been smoothed and rounded.

  “Death and Life,” he remarked, addressing his pupils, “are two facets of the same jewel—sleeping—waking. What reason is there, then, to seek either Death or Life? …Seek rather freedom from both!”

  The girl sobbed. Her mother and her lover helped her rise. She hid her face in her hands. The people dispersed. No one remained, save a dog, who wagged his tail lustily for a few moments, and ran away. Apollonius was walking silently, his hands clasped behind him. Damis walked on his right. The master looked at me.

  “Master,” I said, “how can such a miracle be accomplished? How can you resurrect the dead?”

  “To recall a person from death into life is no more miraculous than to arouse him from sleep. Dying and living are equally mysterious and equally simple,” Apollonius replied.

  “But you are thwarting Nature, master. All living things must die.”

  “Are you sure?” Apollonius responded, looking strangely at me. His eyes, like the eyes of Jesus, seemed to penetrate the core of my being. He added, “Life and death depend upon a slight readjustment-balance. The skillful merchant may lift or lower either side, by adding or subtracting a tiny weight.”

  Apollonius had replied to my unspoken question.

  My mysterious fate presented itself to me in a different angle, much simpler, much less marvelous. It was almost commonplace. I felt for the time being, neither sad nor joyous. I was neither a man in plight nor a man specially favored. Life and death were too much akin.

  Apollonius said, guessing my thought, “Life and death, my son, are one. They are different beats of the same rhythm.”

  We reentered.

  “Master,” I asked, “can a man find his soul in the space of a single life?”

  “It is not a question of finding, my friend, but of seeking.”

  “Why seek, then, that which cannot be found?”

  “That which can be found…is it worth the seeking?”

  XIII: DAMIS, APOLLONIUS AND JESUS—THE DOUBLE BLOSSOM OF PASSION—“CARTAPHILUS DO YOU WANT TO DIE?”—“SEEK—AND PERHAPS—YOU SHALL FIND.”
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br />   BEYOND my name, the Master asked me nothing. Our minds met where the accidents of flesh were meaningless.

  Damis was the favorite disciple. Apollonius considered him as a son. But he was as dear to me as he was to the Master. Hand in hand we walked for hours, discoursing on the remarks of Apollonius, trying to grasp his subtleties. Frequently, I would call him “John.” He would smile.

  “Why do you call me John, Cartaphilus?”

  “I can think of no name half as beautiful for you as John.” I preferred not to tell him my story—for the time being, at least. Damis had learnt from his master the art of discretion.

  “Perhaps something of our ancient prejudices still linger in our souls,” Apollonius once said. “Perhaps we might be inconsiderate enough to judge a man by his race or ancestry. It is better to know nothing of him, except as he appears to us in manner and speech.”

  Apollonius was fond of the full moon. “The sun is too strong for our eyes; the earth is beneath our feet, and we cannot see it; the moon allows us to understand the meaning of the cosmic harmony. She does not attempt to convince us of her glory by either scorching or blinding us.”

  I looked at Apollonius. He squatted on his doorstep as radiant as the moon and as unperturbed.

  “Master, have you ever heard of Jesus?”

  “Yes, in our youth—we were of exactly the same age—we were both the disciples of the same master in Thibet.”

  “In Thibet?” I asked surprised.

  “Yes.”

  This, then, accounted for the long absence of Jesus from Jerusalem. He never spoke about it even to his intimate friends. ‘A god,’ I thought, ‘must be mysterious.’ Addressing Apollonius, I said,—”Master, do you know that Jesus has become a god?”

  Apollonius smiled. “He was always ambitious. Has he many followers, Cartaphilus?”

  “Yes, but they are, with few exceptions, recruited exclusively from the very poor. To follow him, a man must relinquish his wealth. A rich man, according to one of his parables, can no more enter his Heaven than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle.”

  “How characteristic!” Apollonius remarked with an amused smile. “Always a Jew! Only a Jew—albeit a philosopher or a god—would attach so much importance to wealth as to make its denial the basis of salvation.”

  The clarity of the idea startled me.

  We continued watching the moon for a long time in silence.

  “Master, I have been with you for an entire year. You have been as a deep and an inexhaustible fountain of delight to me. I would lower an empty bucket into it, and always it would return filled to the brim with wisdom that cooled and refreshed me.”

  “The water sought the throat as eagerly.”

  “Master, I have traveled in many lands and have seen many things. I have loved and lived much.”

  He nodded.

  “I see before me a dreary desert of years, a desert without end. Can life offer me nothing except repetition?”

  “Time, Cartaphilus, is elastic. It may be stretched or it may be shortened.”

  “Alas, Master, time must stand still for me—perhaps forever.”

  He looked at me.

  “What is the difference between a man condemned to die on the morrow and ourselves, except that our sentence is indefinite?”

  “No, no! I am not speaking in metaphors. I must actually tarry on earth for thousands of years, maybe until the end of time.”

  He was interested, but not startled.

  “Is it not a strange thing, Master?”

  “All things are strange, Cartaphilus. But tell me what powerful factor disarrayed so violently the processes of your being?”

  Apollonius listened to my extraordinary recital. The moon thinned and became amorphous like the torn fragment of a cloud. The sun rose silently, as if on tiptoes, afraid perhaps of the Great Dark that had so recently devoured it. I spoke on, omitting nothing. A young water-carrier passed by, and offered us sweets and cool water.

  “Master, am I not accursed?”

  “Life is not an evil, Cartaphilus, nor is death. No one is really ever born, no one really dies. There is but one Life, and of that we all partake—to a lesser or greater degree.”

  “How had Jesus the power to inflict this upon me?”

  “I have seen greater marvels, Cartaphilus. Jesus, too, has seen. The subtle powers that govern the life and death of the body may be arrested or paralyzed, by a shock. People die of fear or of joy. Is it inconceivable for the reverse process to occur? The shock that can end life, by acting upon the chemistry of our being, may intensify or prolong it…”

  “Will he ever appear again, Master? Must I tarry until he is reborn?”

  “In infinity the same note is sounded again and again in the identical pitch. The same type recurs.”

  ‘Infinity!’

  Apollonius looked at me critically. “Tell me, Cartaphilus, would you really relinquish life if it were possible? Do you want to die?…”

  “Is it possible?”

  “Only if your passion for death is greater than your passion for life.”

  “I am no longer certain, Master.”

  “Then you must carry your fetters, Cartaphilus, or if you please, your garland. Make it a garland of roses,” Apollonius continued. , “Be not afraid of yourself, Cartaphilus. Be strong!”

  “Can we be strong? Are we not tossed about by the whim of an irrational fate?”

  “The will is both free and not free. If you fling a dead leaf into the air, it is carried hither and thither without volition. If you toss a bird upward, the wind may hamper its flight and dash its brains against a rock, but while life persists it will struggle: its will modifies the wind’s will. The average man is a leaf tossed hither and thither. He who has lifted the veil from the face of life resembles the bird. He cannot dominate but, within limits, may direct his fate.”

  “Master,” I said, “the bird has no conception of boredom; he rapturously sings the same note forever. He has no purpose beyond existence. But a man…must not a man’s life have a purpose, Master, if he is to escape from the clutches of the great God Ennui?”

  “Even so.”

  “What purpose can last centuries? Can knowledge, for instance, suffice?”

  “Knowledge is repetitious. One lifetime suffices to recognize its sameness.”

  “Love, Master?”

  “The difference between one love and another becomes finer and finer, until it disappears.”

  “Hate, Master?”

  “Hate may be mightier than love, but hate dies out like a fire. Time is a great sea.”

  “What then…what then, Master??’

  Apollonius meditated. “Have you not spoken of John and Mary, Cartaphilus?”

  “Yes.”

  “You loved both.”

  “Both.”

  He leisurely turned his bracelet. “It is doubtful whether you will ever find a purpose which will run parallel to Time’s strange zigzag.”

  I sighed.

  “And yet if a purpose should be robust enough and capable of a long endurance, would it not suffice?”

  “It would, Master.”

  He combed his beard, twisting the end into a sharp point. “In Damis you see something of John. Even in Poppaea you caught a glint of Mary. All types reintegrate. All return, with infinite variations.

  “The ideal you seek is neither Mary nor John, but a synthesis of both, a double blossom of passion, combining male and female, without being a monster… If you could find John and Mary in one, Cartaphilus, so that touching Mary, you might feel the thrill of John…and speaking to John, you might hear the voice of Mary…would it not rejoice you, Cartaphilus?”

  “It would be the supreme felicity, a devastating joy—a divine surprise, an inconceivable rapture.”

  My head turned, my ears rang. I shivered. “Yes, Master. Yes. That is what I desire…that is what, in his heart, every man yearns for. Master, you are wise beyond wisdom.”

  Ap
ollonius smiled. “But Master, is it possible? Is it possible to find them both in one?”

  “All things are possible, Cartaphilus. The World Spirit, in his ceaseless experiments, may evolve your dream… Seek…and perhaps…you shall find.”

  “Did you not say, Master, ‘that which may be found is it worth the seeking?’ ”

  “There are many truths, Cartaphilus, and every truth carries within itself its own contradiction.”

  He rose and walked into the room.

  Damis, seated in the semi-darkness behind us, had listened to my story without uttering a sound.

  “Damis,” I said, “you have heard my recital, but you have said nothing.”

  “Cartaphilus, why was John’s love not great enough to embrace both Jesus and you?”

  “The Jewish God is a jealous God,” I replied. “Jesus inherited the jealous strain from his Father… He enjoined children to forsake their fathers, and lovers their sweethearts, before accepting them as his followers. He recognized no human tie. ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?’ was his reply to his own mother when she upbraided him for his selfishness.”

  “Our Master makes no conditions. He demands nothing. I love both him and you.”

  Tenderly I took his hand in mine. Then, weary beyond endurance, I placed my head upon his chest. “Damis, let me sleep.”

  “Sleep, Cartaphilus.”

  When I awoke, Apollonius was standing over us, pale, his head bent upon his chest. In his right hand, he held a tall staff, the large branch of a cherry-tree, planed and surmounted by a gold knob, the shape of several snakes huddled together.

  “My children, the time has come when I must depart.”

  “Master!” we both exclaimed.

  “The day has come. I must go.”

  “Whither?” Damis asked.

  “Wherever the spirit leads my feet.”

  “Master, must you conceal the path even from those that love you?”

  “If a man cannot conceal his life, should he not at least conceal his death?”

  “Master, speak not of death!”