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

by George Sylvester Viereck

  “No. The earth is sufficient for me…”

  “May I know to whom I have the honor of speaking?”

  “I am Leonardo da Vinci.”

  Kotikokura was laughing. He had drunk a little beyond measure, and his eyelids looked heavy.

  “Human pleasures are pathetic, Kotikokura. Look at those poor people trying to be happy.”

  Kotikokura opened his eyes wide and nodded.

  “They throw confetti at one another; they sing; they blow horns; they dance; they laugh—but beyond it all, do you not feel a great emptiness, and a great fear, Kotikokura? Do you not hear invisible wings like the winds that whistle through cemeteries…?”

  Kotikokura nodded, his eyes closed.

  “Can you not see Death, the Giant, riding his Phantom Horse, grinning to himself as he surveys his harvest?”

  Kotikokura placed his head upon the table.

  “No, no…you must not fall asleep. Come!”

  He blinked several times, rose and steadied himself on my arm.

  Two youths, dressed in green cloaks, were walking in front of us, arm in arm. Their caps, surmounted by red plumes, were slightly tilted. Their black curls, barely covering half of their napes, were ruffled by a light wind that had just risen. Kotikokura, a little unsteady, was hanging on my arm.

  “Do not these youths remind you of exquisite music? I fear to see their faces. I do not want to be disappointed…”

  Three men, slightly unsteady on their feet, turned the corner, and approached the youths. The latter tried to avoid the encounter, but the men stopped them.

  “You shan’t go any farther, my little chicks,” one of them shouted. The others laughed.

  “You will come along with us.”

  “Stand aside!” one of the youths commanded. “Let us pass.”

  The men looked at him from head to foot, and laughed.

  “Just look at him! Why, my little midget, I can swallow you at a gulp,” one man, tall, muscular, and heavy-bearded, shouted gaily.

  “It’s a girl,” another said.

  “They are both girls…can’t you see?” the third one added, scrutinizing their faces.

  “It is fortunate for you that we have left our swords at home…or we should give you proof of our manhood!”

  “There are other ways of determining that problem,” one of the three remarked with an obscene leer.

  “They are boys!” the first of three exclaimed.

  “It does not matter what you are, my little ones. Come with us… !”

  “Take your foul hands away! Stand aside, let us pass or tomorrow your bodies shall swing from the gibbet,” exclaimed one of the two, his voice raised in a boyish treble.

  “Ha, ha! Ha, ha! The fellow has courage,” cried the bearded roysterer, clumsily embracing the child.

  “Tomorrow takes care of itself. When we come across delicious fruit, we pluck it,” shouted the second, a red-faced youth with Spanish mustachios.

  “And we pluck it tonight,” added the tallest of the three, a dark, dean-shaven villain.

  A little hand descended upon his cheek with enough force to make him hear the angels sing. Fury and desire outstripped his pain. He seized the combative little figure and pressed the humid ardor of drunken kisses upon the child’s mouth.

  The other two men grasped the second youth by the arms and pulled him into the thicket.

  I approached. “Why do you molest these young people?”

  “Mind your own business!”

  The youths looked at me. Their faces were almost exactly alike and of singular beauty.

  “I shall not interfere with you, if you will not interfere with them.”

  “Stand off or– —”

  One of them placed his hand upon the hilt of his knife. Kotikokura, who was standing in back of me, jumped at his throat.

  The others drew their swords. Kotikokura loosened his grip on the first one who coughed violently, then struck the second roysterer a blow over the face which upset him. I gripped the third, and with one delicate twist which I had learned in the East, dislocated his arm. His sword dropped and he bent in two, howling with pain.

  “These drunken ruffians will no longer annoy you,” I said to the youths who were holding each other’s arms, trembling.

  “We are grateful to you, signor,” one of them answered manfully.

  “May we accompany you to where you desire to go, seeing that it is not safe for two young people like you to be out on such a night unaccompanied and unarmed?”

  “We are going home, and if you will be good enough to accompany us, we shall be beholden to you.”

  We stopped at the gate of a palace, situated near the Duomo.

  “It is here that we live, signore,” one of the youths informed me. “Should you care to come in, our uncle will be delighted to make your acquaintance and thank you for your chivalrous aid.”

  I made a few evasive excuses.

  “Do come!” he insisted.

  “Are you certain that you are not inviting—the Devil and his—valet?”

  They laughed.

  We accepted.

  LXIII: ANTONIO AND ANTONIA—BOY OR GIRL—I BLUSH—I TELL A STORY—BEAUTY IS A FLAME—TWO RINGS FOR ONE

  BARON DI MARTINI, a distant relative of the Prince—or if the rumor was true, a half-brother—greeted us cordially.

  “Can you imagine, signore, two young scatterbrains going about the city unattended? I did not know about it until half an hour ago, and I have just sent some servants in search of them. I am really grateful to you, signore, for having saved them from much unpleasantness.”

  A lackey removed the cloaks of the youths. One of them embraced the Baron. “What!” he exclaimed, “dressed as a boy, Antonia? What does this mean?”

  “It is la Festa del Grillo, uncle! Summer! On such a day surely I may have a fling at life…”

  The Baron laughed.

  How had I been so unobservant? The handsome youth was a girl! The scoundrels that accosted them suspected aright. Nevertheless, there was in the slim, graceful figure, a touch of something that justified the boyish mummery.

  “Uncle,” said the other, “we have invited these gentlemen to be our guests.”

  “Splendid, Antonio,” the uncle remarked.

  Antonio, slim and impetuous, was evidently a boy. However it imposed no strain upon the imagination to regard him as a girl in disguise. Without being effeminate he still had that first bloom of childhood, which is either sexless or epicene.

  “Is it proper really,” I asked, “to intrude upon you in this fashion?”

  “I insist, signor, you must be my guests,” the Baron replied.

  “I asked the young gentlemen—or as I notice now—the signor and the signorina, whether they were quite certain they were not inviting…most sinister characters.”

  “Sinister characters!” the uncle laughed. “I do not think a gentleman can ever disguise himself.”

  “It was easy for the signorina to masquerade as a lad.”

  Antonia clapped her hands. “I am so glad I deceived you.”

  “You ought to see me dressed as a woman,” Antonio interjected.

  “Oh yes, he is wonderful!” exclaimed Antonia. “He should have been a woman…and I a man, really.”

  “Silence, woman,” the boy commanded gravely, “or I shall presently chastise you.”

  Antonia laughed. “You should have heard him threaten the three scoundrels that were annoying us, Uncle. ‘It is fortunate for you that we left our swords at home. Stand aside, let us pass, or tomorrow you shall swing from the gibbet.’ ”

  Everybody laughed.

  “Really, signor, these young scatterbrains are keen at reading faces. They take after their mother, my sister, a remarkable woman. May her soul rest in peace!”

  “We hesitated to accept your invitation because we are strangers in Florence and have no wish to transgress upon your kindness. I am Count de Cartaphile of Provence.”

  “Count
de Cartaphile!” the Baron exclaimed. “A descendant of Count de Cartaphile who single-handed slew a regiment of infidels and captured the Holy Sepulchre almost alone?”

  I nodded.

  “What a fortunate coincidence, children!”

  Antonio and Antonia looked at me with new interest.

  “What an honor, Count…and what a delightful surprise! I am writing the history of the Crusades. How often I have spoken to my nephew and to my niece about the exploits of your ancestor, and his companion, the Red Knight! I once wrote to you to Provence but evidently my message, entrusted to a wandering scholar, failed to reach its destination. You must be our guest, Count—as long as you remain in Florence.”

  “Yes, yes,” the children insisted.

  I promised to stay overnight.

  Baron di Martini showed me the garden and orchard which surrounded the castle. Kotikokura walked behind us between two large dogs, black as charcoal.

  “The more I read about the chivalrous deeds of Count de Cartaphile and the Red Knight, the more fascinating those two characters become.”

  We walked in silence for a while in a deluge of flowers.

  “Do you think it really possible, Baron, for two knights such as the Count de Cartaphile and the Red Knight—single-handed—to capture the Holy Sepulchre from a thousand defenders?”

  I looked at him quizzically.

  He nodded. “Sheer physical strength is not enough. Your ancestor may have known the secret word that enlists invisible powers. Both he and the Red Knight, too, undoubtedly called angels in armor to help. The hosts of Heaven were their retinue.”

  “I am familiar with these legends. Our family chronicle tells that the Red Knight appeared in several places at once…”

  “Space and time,” the Baron replied, “are not subject to immutable laws. Their limitations are more elastic…”

  “Are you,” I asked, “a mathematician as well as a historian?”

  “Why?”

  “In my youth, I had a friend—a distinguished Arabian mathematician—who resembled you very much, Baron, and I often noticed that those who resemble each other physically have much in common mentally.”

  “Our thoughts shape our features, no doubt.”

  “Or, perhaps, our features shape our thoughts…”

  “Truth,” the Baron replied, “is an equation permitting of many solutions and it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line of division. Even sex and personality are not always defined. Human character, too, may be a double equation. The unknown quantity may stand for both good and evil.”

  “You are indeed a philosopher.”

  “My nephew and niece,” the Baron continued, “are a double equation. They look alike and they think the same thoughts. You can substitute one for the other…”

  “Remarkable children,” I added.

  “And very lovely. But there they are, whispering to each other. I am quite certain they are conspiring to keep you with us beyond tomorrow.”

  Antonio and Antonia advanced toward us.

  “How delicate is youth!” I said.

  “Nothing,” the Baron added, “surpasses the loveliness of spring. I wish I could keep them from growing older! Before long I shall lose them. Each will go and lose himself in the labyrinth of love and life…”

  “Worse still, perhaps…they will lose each other!”

  Antonia and Antonio raced toward us. Each offered me a rose.

  The boy’s rose was white, hers red. My face flushed. I was a little embarrassed, a pleasurable sensation. ‘How many centuries have passed Cartaphilus,’ I thought, ‘since you have last blushed! You are still young… It is well.’

  “You are too kind,” I said, at loss for words.

  “Without you, Count, we might be dead…”Antonia remarked archly.

  “You exaggerate your peril.”

  “No, no, Count,” the Baron interposed. “You do not know the Florentines. Art and crime both flourish within our walls.”

  “Count,” said the girl, “you must know many stories…”

  “Tell us one,” said the boy.

  “A story!” the girl repeated.

  “They still are children,” the Baron remarked, “even if they pretend to be grown up.”

  Kotikokura ran, the dogs after him, barking lustily.

  “It is strange, Count—those two dogs, ordinarily ferocious toward strangers, have become from the first moment inseparable companions of your man.” “He is a lover of animals, Baron, and animals, no doubt, scent his affection at once.”

  Antonio and Antonia, on either side of me, we walked slowly through the garden. The delicate pressure of their arms—one barely heavier than the other—delighted me. It was like the warm pulsation of the heart of a bird.

  The Baron, summoned by the Prince on business of state, apologized for his absence and asked the scatterbrains—as he was pleased to call the children whenever he was most affectionate—to entertain me.

  We were sitting in a corner of the enormous reception hall, whose walls had been frescoed by the old masters of Florence, Antonio on my right, Antonia on my left. Kotikokura sat opposite us, a dog on either side of him.

  I raised the chin of Antonio with my forefinger, then that of Antonia, and looked into their eyes.

  “Who are you?” I asked.

  They smiled.

  “Who are you?” I repeated.

  “We are Toni,” Antonia answered.

  “Both Toni?”

  They nodded.

  “Are you one or two?”

  “We are one and two.”

  “Where did I meet you before?”

  “You met me…far, far away,” said Antonia, speaking like a child that is telling a fairy tale.

  “And me still farther,” added Antonio with boyish eagerness.

  “He always tries to outdo me, Count. It is the vanity of the male…”

  “Silence, woman!” the boy commanded. “Man is the master.”

  “No!” she exclaimed.

  “Woman must remain the inferior of man—always,” the boy insisted.

  “Toni!” she exclaimed. “How can you say that?”

  “Except you, my dear. But you are not a woman.”

  “Well, I shall be one.”

  “Never!”

  “Yes…and I shall be the queen of a great nation where women rule over men.”

  “Do you not think that woman is the equal of man, Count?” Antonia asked.

  “Some women are the equal of goddesses.”

  “See?”

  “Then some men are the equal of gods, Count.”

  “They are.”

  “And is not a god greater than a goddess?”

  “Sex distinctions are not important among the gods…”

  “See, Toni? But Count, tell us the story you promised!”

  They pulled their chairs nearer to me.

  “Ready!” they both exclaimed.

  “Once upon a time, there were two children—a boy and a girl– —”

  “No, no, Count.”

  “We are no longer children.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course.”

  “Some of the things I shall tell, you may not understand.”

  They laughed.

  “Count,” Antonio whispered, “we have read Aretino and Boccaccio.”

  Antonia blushed a little and nodded.

  “What!” I exclaimed in mock reproof.

  For a moment, they were nonplussed but, catching a faint smile about my lips, they burst into laughter. Each placed an arm upon my shoulders, and their voices mingling into one, said: “You cannot deceive us, Count. You too believe that the beautiful is the good. Uncle sometimes tries to appear severe on moral questions. Dear uncle—he considers himself responsible for our welfare. But you are like an older brother. You can afford to be candid with us…”

  “You are right, little sister and brother.”

  “Don’t call us little,” Antonia r
eprimanded me. “Call us sister and brother.”

  I placed my arms about their waists. “Brother and sister, you are supremely good, because you are supremely beautiful…and as long as you will be beautiful, you will be good. Ugliness is the only sin…”

  “Tediousness is the only evil,” Antonia added sagely.

  I related divers experiences. By merely calling the centuries years and the years months, I discovered that, after all, one could squeeze upon a tiny canvas what had been spread leisurely upon an enormous wall. Although I used various names to hide my identity, they knew perfectly well that I was telling my own experiences.

  Salome and Ulrica intrigued Antonia, Flower-of-the-Evening and Damis fascinated Antonio. They asked questions, apparently very innocently and merely for the sake of elucidation, but in reality they showed that uncanny prescience of sex which sometimes startles us in the very young.

  I thought of the white rose, symbol of purity, whose perfume and pollen are but sexual allurement to entice the bee and the butterfly. Under the petal of their youth, the children’s senses were stirred, and the perfume of their desire was wafted to me.

  They snuggled against me. Suddenly, Antonia stood up. “Why, my dear, the Count must be thirsty and hungry too.”

  Antonio clapped his hands. “Why, of course! You will never be a woman, sister. You will never think of important trifles.”

  She smiled. Was her smile irony? Was it wisdom? Was it pity? Was she a daughter of the Sphinx?

  A servant entered. Antonia ordered wine and cakes and fruits in such abundance that I burst out laughing.

  “You overestimate my capacity.”

  Antonia filled our cups. We drank to beauty, which is truth, and to truth which is beauty.

  “Oh,” she exclaimed suddenly, “we have forgotten him.” She pointed to Kotikokura who was smiling, his eyes half-closed. “He is such a queer and dear fellow,” she whispered.

  She filled a cup for him and brought him some cakes and fruit.

  I told them anecdotes about Africa and India. Cheered by the wine, they laughed uproariously.

  “What a strange ring you have, Count. Is it from India?”

  “No, Toni—this ring belonged to one of Mohammed’s nephews…it brings good luck to its wearer.”

  “Has it brought good luck to you?”