Pilgermann (6 page)

A very good example of the accuracy of Bosch’s observation of the real behind the apparent is the upper left-hand side of the central panel of the Temptation of Saint Anthony’ triptych. It is not necessary to have seen this painting to recognize immediately what I am about to describe; I refer to it only as a convenient example.

The upper right-hand side of the central panel shows a daytime sky; extraordinary things are to be seen in it but none the less it is an ordinary daytime sky; the left-hand side of the central panel shows the night that is always waiting within the day and the fire that is always waiting within the night. It is in this night within the day, this fire within the night, that what I am going to talk about is to be seen. Bosch gives us burning farms and churches, falling steeples and gibbets, winged creatures (one of them with a ladder) flying through the air, companies of
horsemen, sundry peasants and animals, and a woman washing clothes in the river by the light of the burning. One sees at once that this fire has not spread gradually from a small beginning; no, it has from its waiting state exploded into being, has burst the skin of night and time that could no longer contain it. On the right-hand edge of this night with the fire in it, in the space between the night on the left and the day on the right, the illumination is like that of a twentieth-century sports stadium in which a night game is being played; only there does one see light of such preternatural brilliance as that through which the creature (is it an angel or a devil?) with the ladder flies. Bosch could have seen such light and shadow only in a flash of lightning. But the light in this picture, this light between the night on the left and the day on the right, is not the flash that is gone in a fraction of a moment, it is lightning sustained and steady. This shows Bosch’s virtuality as well as his virtuosity; I have flown beside that creature with the ladder (always uncertain as to its allegiance; it has a tail but I cannot be sure it’s a devil) and I can testify that Bosch experienced that sky by quantum-jumping to the strange brilliance of total Now.

This condition of total Now manifests itself in a number of ways and one of them is that extraordinary lucence that I have just described, that epiphany of light immanent in our being and experienced in certain heightened states as the light-as-bright-as-day within the night, the light as bright as lightning. Now as I lie in the darkness on the wet and maggoty grass under the headless naked body of the tax-collector it is not darkness that I see but the crystalline vibrations of the purple-blue. These vibrations I recognize as being of the spectrum of total Now, that moment without beginning or end in which all other moments are contained.

I have spoken before this of the Now of Sophia’s nakedness in my mind but it is not with Sophia nor with Jesus that I have seen the light of total Now. No, the headless naked body of the tax-collector has been the first thing that I have seen in this unearthly light. Now lying on the ground under his hanging body I hear in the purple-blue the multitudinous leaves whispering Now in the rising wind.

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 these 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.