Report to Grego (36 page)

Taking up my pen, I commenced to write and to relieve myself—to give birth.

I did not begin at the beginning. It was Magdalene who sprang out first of all, apprehensive, bathed in tears, her hair undone. She had awakened with a start, before daybreak. She must have seen the Rabbi in her dreams. Like the fowler enticing his prey, she began to call him:

Oh how wonderful! I cannot lift

my head, so fragrant is the air. Arise,

my heart, and beat the ground to force it open!

My earthen shoulders skip like wings, but dawn

is slow in coming, the body oh so heavy.

Do not hasten, soul, before I clothe myself

and go. See, as a bride I dress and preen.

My palms and soles I paint with henna, my eyes

with dilute kohl, and a beauty spot joins my brows.

For as love the earth, so majestic heaven gently

beats my breast, and bowing down, I

accept the Word with joy and lamentation,

as if it were a man. And when by flowering

paths I finally reach your beloved tomb,

like a woman, Christ, forsaken by her lover,

shall I clasp your pallid knees, that never

may you leave me. . . . I shall talk, and clasp

your pallid knees. . . . Though all deny you, Christ,

you will not die, for in my breast I hold

the immortal water; I give it you, and upon the

earth you mount once more and walk with me

in the meadows. I shall sing like the love-struck

bird that sits upon the almond branch in

snowtime and warbles in a rapture, its beak

raised high toward heaven, until the branch sprouts blossoms.

I could not sleep; I was in a terrible hurry, because now that the faces had solidified for an instant, I wanted to be in time to take them—the Apostles, Magdalene, Christ; the mist that becomes corporeal, the lie that becomes truth, the soul that sings from its perch on the highest branch of hope—and stabilize them permanently with sure, firm words.

At the end of a few days and nights the manuscript of the entire drama lay upon my knees. I held it tightly, just as a mother holds her son after childbirth.

L
ent had started and Easter was approaching. I began to go for strolls in the fields. The world had become a paradise; the snows of Olympus sparkled in the sunlight while the fields below shone bright green and the returning swallows, like shuttles of a loom, wove spring into the air. Small white and yellow wildflowers, pushing up the soil with their tiny heads, began to emerge into the sunlight in order to see the world above. Someone must have rolled back the earthen tombstones above them: they were being resurrected. Someone? . . . Who? Doubtlessly God, God of the innumerable faces: sometimes a flower, sometimes a bird or a fresh shoot on a grapevine, sometimes wheat.

As I strolled through the blossoming fields, a gentle vertigo transformed time and place around me. I seemed to be walking in Palestine rather than Greece; I could discern the still-fresh traces left by Christ's feet on the frothy springtime soil, while around me towered the holy mountains of Carmel, Gilboa, and Tabor. These were not stalks of wheat springing from the ground until they reached the height of a man, they were Christ springing from the tomb; those were not red anemones, they were Christ's holy blood.

Somebody once asked Rabbi Nahman, “What do you mean when you preach that we should go to Palestine? Surely Palestine is simply an idea, a faraway ideal which Jewish souls must someday reach.” Nahman became angry. Driving his staff into the ground,
he shouted, “No, no! When I say Palestine, I mean its stones, vegetation, and soil. Palestine is not an idea, it is stones, vegetation, and soil. That is where we must go!”

That is where I must go, I told myself. To see and touch Palestine's warm body, and not simply to enjoy it in my imagination while sauntering over the mountains and fields of Greece; to breathe the air, tread the ground, touch the stones that Christ breathed, trod, and touched; to follow the drops of blood which marked out His passage among men. Yes, I must leave! Perhaps there in Palestine I will find what I sought in vain at the Holy Mountain.

Once more the wind of embarkment blew across my mind. How long would it continue to do so? God grant until my death! What joy to cast off from dry land and depart! To snip the string which ties us to certitude and depart! To look behind us and see the men and mountains we love receding into the distance!

Holy Week was approaching. Throughout all of Christendom Christ would be crucified; the five immortal wounds would reopen, and the heart—Mary Magdalene—would come once more to wrestle with death. What happiness when a man has a heart still like a child's and he can suffer during these days: be unable to eat, sleep, or control his tears when at the vigils he sees the lemon-flower-covered body of his God writhing on the cross! What further happiness when, spring entering through the open windows of the church, he is in love with a girl, his first love, and they have promised to meet at noon of Good Friday to do obeisance together by kissing the Crucified's feet, and he, being so terribly young, trembles because he believes he is committing a sin to join his lips with a woman's upon the body of God.

Closing my Homer, I kissed the immortal grandfather's hand, without daring, however, to lift my head and look him straight in the eye. I was ashamed and afraid before him, because I knew only too well that I was betraying him at that moment: leaving him behind me and taking along his great enemy, the Bible.

Neither heaven nor earth had awakened yet—just a cock on a rooftop, craning its neck toward the east and calling the sun (the night had lasted far too long!) finally to appear.

As though afraid the old grandfather might hear me, I opened the door stealthily, like a thief, and took the road to the harbor in
order to set sail. Hordes of men and women had come down from their villages to depart like myself for Palestine and do obeisance at the Holy Sepulcher. I shall never forget that evening of embarkment—the tenderness, the sweetness, the compassion of it! There was a gentle, ruthful drizzle, and if you had raised your head to look at the sky, you would have seen God's face filled with tears.

On the boat itself, greasy quilts and blankets of many colors had been spread out on deck. Throngs of old women were opening their baskets and chewing; the air smelled of fish roe and onions. In the center stood an elderly man with rose-red cheeks and long gray hair. His torso swaying back and forth, he read the Christ story in a loud, chanting voice—Christ's life and passion: how the Bridegroom came to Jerusalem, after that how He and the Disciples ate the bitter Lord's Supper, how the traitorous disciple left hastily, and how Jesus climbed the Mount of Olives, the sweat running from His forehead “like clots of blood.”

The little old black-mantled women sighed, swayed their heads, listened with deep emotion, all the while chewing away calmly and noiselessly, like sheep. God, in their simple hearts, was once more taking on flesh, being crucified, saving mankind. A young shepherd, his back turned toward the women, listened intently as he leaned over, penknife in hand, and whittled the head of a bird on the top of his crook.

Suddenly, when Christ's broiling throat finally became unbearably parched and He cried out, “I thirst!” a youngish, rather plump woman jumped up in a frenzy and shouted, “O my son!” How disturbed I felt at hearing the woman's deep, maternal cry, at hearing her call God himself her son!

We had left the Aegean behind us now and were approaching the Near East. Africa lay invisible on our right, Cyprus stood to our left on the horizon. The fiery sea was flashing. Two butterflies flew up above the rigging. A small, famished bird had been following us; it darted forward and ate one of them. When a pale and delicate girl began to scream in protest, someone said, “Forget about it; that's the way it should be. What do you think God is—some delicate lady?”

We were drawing near the sun-baked land where once upon a time a flame had bounded out of a poor cottage in Nazareth, a
flame which burned and renewed man's heart. Life today is again in a state of decomposition, just as it was two thousand years ago, but the problems currently shattering the equilibrium between mind and heart are more intricate, the solutions more difficult and bloody. Then, a simple message of utmost sweetness was found, and salvation rose to the earth's surface like the season of spring. No simpler, sweeter message exists. Perhaps this message is capable of saving us even now—who can tell? That was why we were going to Jerusalem: to listen once more to the Son of Mary.

It was nighttime. I stretched out on the deck to go to sleep, but a violent debate had begun to rage in the hold below, and I lent an ear. Someone, a young man, judging from the quality of his voice, was passionately condemning the dishonesty and injustice of present-day economic and social life. The masses went hungry while the great and powerful piled up fortunes. Women sold themselves, priests did not believe, both heaven and the infernal pit were here on earth. The afterlife did not exist; here was where we had to find justice and happiness. . . . Cries rang out: “Yes, yes, you're right!” “Fire and the axe!” Only one person attempted to object. I recognized him by his chanting inflection as the deacon traveling with us. But his voice was drowned in shouts and laughter.

Springing off my pillow, I listened greedily. This ship's hold seemed like a new catacomb in which slaves had assembled once more—today's slaves—to conspire to blow the world up all over again. It was frightening. The purpose of our trip was to worship the sweet, familiar face of God—so gentle, so tortured, so filled with hopes for life everlasting. The little old women were bringing Him consecrated bread, silver ex-votos, candles, tears, and prayers. High up in first class, the carefree faithless talked politics or slept, while here below, deep down in the hold, we were carrying as a terrifying gift the seed of a new, dangerous, and as yet unformed cosmogony.

A beloved and sacrosanct world was in danger; another, a harsh world all mud and flame, was rising full of life from the soil and man's heart. Hidden deep down in the hold, it straddled every boat, and traveled.

The next morning we began to see the Promised Land—a distant line on the horizon at first, invisible in the milky haze; then
the low mountains of Judea, gray in the beginning, afterwards light blue, finally vanishing, drowned in the powerful light of day. The little old ladies rose. Gathering together their bundles and tying their black wimples over their heads, they began to cross themselves and weep.

Sand, genial orchards, swarthy, greasy women, prickly pears, date trees; the climb to the holy city in panting buses. Suddenly every heart beat violently. Walls, battlements, fortified gates; odor of dung, spices, and rotted fruit. White jelabs, fierce guttural voices. The shades of all the murdered prophets rose from the soil; the stones came to life and cried out, all covered with blood.

Jerusalem!

I
neither desire to recall that Holy Week, nor dare. During those seven days the whole of man's tragic adventure finally became manifest—the hope and love, the betrayal and sacrifice, the cry of “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Not Christ but man—every just and pure man—was being betrayed, scourged, and crucified, without God offering His hand to help. Indeed, had woman's warm heart not been present, God would have left man to lie within the tomb forever. Our salvation hangs upon a thread, upon a cry of love.

One night led to the next, bringing me finally to the holy dawn of Easter Day. The Temple of the Resurrection was buzzing like an immense hive. It smelled of beeswax and human perspiration—the sweaty white, brown, and black armpits of men and women who had slept that night beneath the temple vaults, awaiting the universe-generating moment when the holy light would spring from Christ's Sepulcher. Everywhere a deep acid stench of wax and rancid oil. Underneath the holy icons coffee boiled in little pots and mothers bared their breasts to nurse their infants. The Negresses must have anointed their hair with tallow; it had melted, making them smell like sheep. Their menfolk exuded the insupportable fetor of billy goats.

Wave after wave of pilgrims arrived, filling the temple to overflowing. Some climbed the columns, others straddled the stalls. Still others drooped over the women's gallery, their excited, transfixed eyes riveted to the small tabernacle in the center of the church, from which the holy light would spring at any moment.
Abyssinians and Bedouins, Negroes with fezzes, with multicolored jelabs and flaming rheumy eyes—all the races of mankind—shouting, laughing, sighing. A young man fainted, was lifted up and deposited stiff as a board in the courtyard; a slender elderly Maronite priest clothed in a snow-white soutane and red sash fell to the paving stones foaming at the mouth.

Suddenly the multitude grew silent. The air filled with burning eyes. The Patriarch had appeared, dressed all in gold. Alone, without speaking, he lowered his head and stepped beneath the holy tabernacle at the center of the church. Mothers lifted their children to their shoulders so that they could see; the fellahs stood with hanging jaws. Each second fell like a thick drop upon our heads, the air tautened until it rasped like a drumhead, and behold! a gleam leaped from the sacred canopy, and the Patriarch emerged with a thick bundle of burning white candles in his hand. In a flash the temple was flooded with flames from base to top. All the onlookers, holding their white candles, had dashed toward the Patriarch to receive the light. They put their hands into the flame and rubbed their faces and breasts. The women were shrieking; the men began to dance. Howling, everyone poured out toward the door to leave.