Pilgermann

by Russell Hoban

  The purple-blue withdraws, the sky goes black; the thunder rolls, the lightning crashes and the jagged black doors of the sky jump apart to reveal the purple-blue multiplied, intensified to unbearable brilliance. Now I see that the life of humankind, the life of the world even, fits easily into the space of that lightning-flash. And how many lightning-flashes have there been, will there be. It is with the dead tax-collector that I have seen this and I begin to pray for him. The words come into my mind:

  What is man that thou art mindful of him …

  But no more words come; I don’t know to whom or to what I pray. I perceive that what is receiving my prayers is nothing with whom one speaks in words, nothing of whom one asks anything, nothing to whom one tells anything.

  The thunder crashes where I am, the lightning cleaves the tree to its roots, the stinking maggoty corpse falls on me. I jump up and run through the dark wood, and as I run I hear the bell that had been nodding slowly now ringing fast, I hear the clatter of bones, the neighing of the pale horse, the low chuckle of Gevatter Tod, Goodman Death himself. The Bath Kol hisses wordlessly in my ear; I stop running and walk forward slowly, feeling with my hand in the darkness before me. My hand finds a wire, a man-snare.

  I draw my dagger and go on. In the air on my face I feel the approach of something, I step to the right, a blade rips through my left sleeve, someone grunts as with my left arm I get him in a neck-grip and with my right hand I strike with the dagger. ‘O my God!’ cries a man’s voice. Again and again I strike, there is gurgling, gasping, coughing, he falls to the ground and is silent. I move back off the path into the trees and wait to see if anyone else is coming. I am not afraid and this surprises me; I think: When I had balls I didn’t have this much balls.

  While I lean against a tree, panting in the dark of that dire wood and listening to the hooting of an owl, the world is full of domes: golden domes and leaden ones; domes with crosses, domes with crescents, great domes and small ones; broken domes and whole ones; domes in Jerusalem, domes in Constantinople. The biggest dome of course is that of the heavens, one can’t in this world have a bigger one than that; but there is a human urge to enclose domes of air as large as possible, to shape lesser heavens in domes of human manufacture. So many domes!

  It must be borne in mind that one is part of a vast picture the whole of which can never be seen; in this picture, as in Bosch’s ‘Temptation of Saint Anthony’, night and day are side by side—I have seen this myself. The world is two domes put together, the night curves round it, fading into day. Somewhere, while I lean against this tree in the dark, it is already broad day. This little wood of night with its tiny figures, its owls and mice, its rotting corpse, its luminous Death on his pale horse with its nodding bell, its river running beside it humming in the starshine, is a background detail; in the foreground of the central panel flash the gold, the domes, and among them none greater than that one enclosing its vasty heaven of silvery lucence, blue and golden dimness in Constantinople, decked with jewels and hung with lamps and lustres, starred with glimmering suspended candles burning in the air that is smoky with incense: the Church of the Holy Wisdom, Hagia Sophia. This dome that I have never seen has because of its name and the mystery of itself incorporated itself with Sophia in my mind.

  Now, however, in my little wood in this little night part of the background, I see nothing of domes, I see only the darkness, hear only the owl, listen for Death, listen for my Bath Kol. I hear nothing for a long time but when I move away from the tree I do hear something; I throw myself to the side, hear a knife smack into the tree. Before I can make a move with my dagger a powerful female voice bellows, ‘Don’t hurt me! I’m only a poor widow woman, I meant no harm!’

  I grab her arm; even as she begs for mercy she is pulling with all her might to get the knife out of the tree for another try. ‘Meant no harm!’ I say. ‘You tried to kill me!’

  ‘Where’s the harm in that?’ she says, gripping my wrist with her free hand. ‘You’re a gentleman, aren’t you? I wasn’t doing anything but sending you early to Heaven.’

  ‘How do you know you’d be sending me to Heaven?’ I say. As I say it she twists suddenly and, still gripping my wrist, bends smoothly and throws me over her shoulder to the ground.

  I land heavily on my back but I bring her down with me and in the struggle that follows I end up sitting on top of her. She’s a well-built woman and I think longingly of times that will never come again. ‘Why are we fighting?’ she says. ‘We’re all God’s children, aren’t we? We’re all brothers and sisters in Christ.’

  ‘Not me,’ I say. ‘I’m a Jew.’

  ‘So was Christ,’ she says. ‘It makes nothing. Are you just going to sit there, aren’t you going to have me?’

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I’m a eunuch.’

  ‘Yet God be thanked!’ she says.

  ‘For what?’ I say.

  ‘That they didn’t cut out your tongue as well!’ she says.

  Thus, in our little dark wood in our tiny bit of background on the night side of the picture.

  The night is far gone when she takes me to a little hut deep in the wood and well off the travelled path. Hanging from a tripod over the embers of a fire is the head of the tax-collector, somewhat shrivelled and smoke-darkened. ‘God in Heaven!’ I say.

  ‘Pontius Pilate,’ she says. ‘He’s not quite done but he’ll certainly fetch twenty pieces of gold when he’s ready. You won’t get a Pilate like that anywhere for less than fifty; a Pilate like that will make any church rich, it’s really unusual.’

  ‘Why Pilate?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘That’s just how it is. When I saw him I said, “Pontius Pilate”.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but why would a church want the head of Pontius Pilate?’

  ‘How could they not want him?’ she says. ‘What kind of relics have they got? They’ve got Christ’s foreskin and Mary’s afterbirth and three hairs from Joseph’s arse but what about the man who made Christianity possible? What if Pilate hadn’t washed his hands? What if he’d turned Jesus loose and let him go on preaching, what then, hey?’

  I ponder this.

  ‘Why were you coming through this wood?’ she says.

  ‘I’m going to Jerusalem,’ I say, suddenly remembering that I’m in a hurry.

  ‘What for?’ she says.

  ‘To keep Jesus from going away,’ I say.

  ‘He’s already gone,’ she says. ‘If Jesus had stayed buried in Jerusalem he’d have been divided up amongst all the churches in Christendom by now. You must know he was resurrected even if you are a Jew.’

  ‘I know,’ I say. ‘I’ve seen him.’

  ‘Did you get any relics of him?’ she says.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ I say.‘I really saw him.’

  ‘How?’ she says. ‘Had you a vision?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘ wasn’t quite myself at the time. I was leaning on him, he was holding me up.’

  ‘Did he have a smell?’ she says.

  I put my mind back to when I was with Jesus. ‘He smells of stone and sweat and fire,’ I say.

  ‘Then Jesus he wasn’t,’ she says. ‘Jesus wouldn’t have a smell, that’s how you’d know him.’

  ‘Everybody has some kind of a smell,’ I say.

  ‘Well I know it,’ she says. ‘That’s just why Jesus would be different; he’s the Son of God, isn’t he? Do you think things came out of him like out of ordinary people when he was on earth? Do you think he made turds?’

  I say, ‘Well, he ate and he drank and he bled so I suppose he must have done the rest of it as well the same as anyone else.’

  ‘There you show your heathen ignorance, thou child of darkness,’ she says. ‘If Jesus had made turds they’d never have corrupted like ordinary ones and they’d be in little golden jewelled caskets in churches.’

  This also I ponder.

  ‘Maybe I should come with you,’ she says. ‘It isn’t safe to travel alone the
se days.’

  I look at her. She’s not at all a bad-looking woman, she’s certainly strong enough to be a helpful companion on the road and she’s good company as well. It’s true that she’s a murderess but in these times that’s perfectly acceptable to me as long as she’s murdering for me and not against me.

  ‘You owe me something, you know,’ she says. ‘After all, it was you that widowed me.’

  ‘And it was you that almost made me a relic,’ I say. I want her to come with me but it would be a kind of holding on; my pilgrimage requires to be a solitary journey; it is a private matter between Jesus and me and the tax-collector. ‘I can’t take you with me,’ I say, ‘I’ve made a vow.’

  ‘Of what?’ she says. ‘Chastity?’

  ‘A vow to go alone,’ I say. ‘You won’t be without a man long, a woman like you. You can find yourself a real man instead of a eunuch.’

  ‘Give me that ring on your finger then,’ she says. ‘For remembrance.’

  I look at my hand. There it is, the tax-collector’s wedding ring. I put it on her finger.

  ‘If you had your proper parts you’d have taken me,’ she says. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to do without me once you’d had me.’

  When she says that it comes to me suddenly that if I had my proper parts I’d not be in this wood, I’d not be on this pilgrimage. If I’d been more careful about what streets I walked in I might still be climbing that ladder while the tax-collector completed his metamorphosis into Pontius Pilate. It occurs to me then that it might have been my castration as much as anything else that started him on his penitential pilgrimage.

  The poor maggoty stump of his corpse is still lying on the ground by the lightning-blasted tree while his head hangs from the tripod in the hut. That the head is either assuming or re-assuming the identity of Pontius Pilate seems to me a destiny that is not for me to interfere with. To the body, however, I surely owe a burial.

  ‘Why was he hung up like that?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says the woman. ‘Udo did that, the one you killed. He didn’t like the look of him.’

  The woman has of course a shovel among the tools and implements of her trade and with it I dig the grave. We put the body into the grave and I hear the words of the Kaddish coming out of my mouth, I see the black Hebrew letters rising in the morning air: ‘Yisgaddal v’yiskadash sh’may rabbo … Magnified and sanctified be his great name ’

  Hearing the words, seeing the black letters rising in the air, I find myself paying attention to what I am saying, paying attention to the first words of the prayer:

  Magnified and sanctified be his great name in the world which he hath created according to his will.

  As I say these words I am looking at a spider’s web pearled with the morning dew; the morning sunlight shining through it illuminates every droplet and every strand of the web; the spider, like an initial letter, witnesses the prayer and the fresh morning darkness of the oak leaves above it. My partnership with the tax-collector makes continual astonishment in me: it seems to me that never before have I noticed how much detail there is in the world which he hath created according to his will. That this headless stump with the absent face of Pontius Pilate should lie writhing with maggots under the freshly turned earth while each perfectly-formed drop of dew shines on the purposeful strands of the spider’s web and the spider itself is a percipient witness and the oak leaves tremble in awareness of the morning air—all this is as the hand of God upon my eyes even though I know that God will never again limit its manifestation to any such thing as might have a hand to lay upon my eyes.

  In the mounded earth of the tax-collector’s grave I plant his pilgrim staff and to the staff I tie a sprig of oak leaves. I find myself wondering about the boundaries, the limits of the tax-collector. I find myself wondering whether his face might appear on more than one person. I go to the body of the man I killed, Udo. He is lying on his face where he fell. I turn him over and have a good look. It is not the face of the tax-collector.

  ‘You want to remember him?’ says the woman.

  ‘I want to remember everything,’ I say.

  ‘You want to remember me also?’ she says.

  ‘You also,’ I say.

  ‘Here,’ she says, giving me her knife and taking Udo’s knife for herself. ‘It’ll bring you luck.’

  We stand looking down at Udo. ‘What about him?’ I say. ‘John the Baptist maybe? The prophet Elijah?’

  She shakes her head. ‘He never was any good for anything but being Udo,’ she says.

  We bury him and I go. As I’m walking away into the morning I turn and look at her. A big strong murdering woman, but alone.

  ‘What’s your name?’ I say.

  ‘Sophia,’ she says.

  7

  In a red and smoky dream of Hell full of cranes and scaffolding and ladders, in a dream of Hell where demons and sinners labour constantly to build their flaming towers, Unguent VII, carrying a hod of bricks, climbs a shaky ladder made of bloody bones torn out of live Jews. Once on his scaffolding of stiff Jewish corpses he picks up his trowel, a Jewish shoulder-blade, and lays yet another course to make the wall of his circular tower one brick higher.

  Within the circle of his wall rises the circumcised member of Christ Erect. With bricks and mortar made of the clay of Jews, made of the straw, lime, sand, water, and blood of Jews Unguent is trying to build the tower high enough so that he can put a foreskin made of flayed Jews on the member of Christ. As the tower rises so does the member but Unguent toils faster and faster.

  Just as he is about to put the foreskin on and tie it down with a rope made of Jewish entrails the bricks dissolve into a sea of Jewish blood in which Unguent swims for thousands of years until he sees under that everlasting red and smoky night the lighthouse of Christ Lucent. It is an iron lighthouse, it is white-hot and the sea boils round it but Unguent must needs cling to it or drown.

  Unguent clings and drowns, clings and drowns in the boiling sea of blood for thousands of years more until the sea recedes to reveal the endless empty desert in which rises the pillar of the Salt Christ. Not until Unguent licks the salt pillar down to the ground will the rain fall to slake his thirst. When the rain falls it is the blood of Jews. That is as far as Unguent has got in this dream in all the times he has dreamt it. Like the dream of Unguent related earlier this one goes on all the time and Unguent the donor, modestly small, kneels praying in a corner of it.

  The fabric of the world being made as much of dreams and visions as it is of earth and stone, these virtual dreams of Unguent and these actual visions of Bosch centuries after my time are as real as anything else in my pilgrimage: they are as real as the castle on the mountain, as real as the gibbet at the crossroads where the crows flap cawing from the hanged men as I pass, as real as the wolves of the forest that drift like grey ghosts among the trees; the village dogs that guard the dust of the street and bark as I pass; the women at the well; the men outside the inn; the pigeons circling the pantiled roofs; the peasants in the fields; the signpost under a grey sky on the heath. By this same signpost will pass Bosch’s gaunt wayfarer of the ‘Haywagon’ triptych, will pass Schubert’s heartbroken young winter traveller; there is only one road for all.

  Like the crows flapping up from the hanged men my thoughts scatter and like the crows they return to what they were feeding on. This is a good comparison because for the crows there is life to be got from death and for me there is the life of my present state arising from the death of my past one. If I had my proper parts I’d not be on this road; that’s a simple truth, not to be argued with. Had I my proper parts I’d still be prescribing for my patients or sitting cross-legged with my cloth and my needle, plying my trade and in my free hours finding what pleasure I could in life. Climbing that ladder is what I’d be doing as often as I had the chance. But how long could that have continued, my garden of Eden? Even God had to put Adam and Eve on the road before he could get on with the story. Thinking, thinking, and
I can’t think how I could have gone on living without coming on this pilgrimage, without being as I am being now. When I had my proper parts I must have been blind and deaf, the world had not come alive for me, I had never talked with Christ, had never put my feet into the footsteps of my road away, had never, alone in a dark wood, seen the light of Now. So, Pilgermann, let your heart have balls, and on to Jerusalem.

  Under the sun, under the rain I trudged on. On the bank of the river I saw a man hanging a bear from a tree. Not bear meat but a whole live bear. He was hanging it with a rope passed over a branch and a hangman’s noose on the end of it the same as if he were hanging a man. A big brown bear and it was coughing and moaning as its own weight slowly strangled it. The man was lean and ragged, his beard was full of twigs and leaves and rubbish, it looked as if it might have birds nesting in it. As he braced himself with his feet against the trunk of the tree and pulled on the rope he cried, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’

  Before I could think what I was doing I had cut the rope with the knife given me by the second Sophia. The bear crashed to the ground and lay there without moving. The man turned on me in a fury. ‘You murdering fool!’ he screamed, ‘You’ve killed God!’

  I said, ‘I didn’t mean to kill him.’

  ‘But you have killed him!’ he said. ‘God was everything to me, he was big and strong and shaggy, he was like a bear.’

  ‘He was a bear,’ I said.

  ‘Of course he was,’ said the man. ‘God can be whatever he likes, completely and divinely; he always used to find me honey trees. And you’ve killed him, you’ve killed God.’ There were a bow and arrows and a hunter’s pouch lying on the ground; he picked up the bow and fitted an arrow to the string, aiming it at me. At this moment the bear stood up on his hind legs. He began to low and grunt, making gestures with his paws like a man making a speech.