Report to Grego (53 page)

Constantly stumbling, I increased my pace and ran anxiously homeward in order to look in the mirror and see what state I was in.

When I finally arrived and turned on the light and looked, I emitted a cry of terror. My entire face was swollen and horribly disfigured; my eyes were barely visible between two overflowing masses of florid flesh, and my mouth had become an oblong slot incapable of opening. Suddenly I remembered the girl Frieda. Being in such a disgusting state, how could I see her the next day? I wrote out a telegram: “Can't come tomorrow, will come the day after,” and fell onto my bed in despair. What disease can this be? I asked myself. Was it leprosy? As a child in Crete I often saw lepers with their swollen, blood-red, constantly desquamating faces, and now I recalled what horror they had roused in me—so much that one day I had said, “If I were king, I would take all the lepers, hang stones around their necks, and heave them into the sea.” Was it possible that the Invisible
(an
Invisible) had remembered my inhuman words and sent me this horrible disease as a punishment?

That night I did not get a moment's sleep. I was anxious for dawn to come, for I said to myself that perhaps the trouble would pass by morning, and I continually investigated my face to see if the swelling had begun to subside. At daybreak I jumped out of bed and ran to the mirror. An appalling mask of flesh was glued to my face; the skin had commenced to burst open and exude a yellowish-white liquid. I was not a man, I was a demon.

I called for the chambermaid in order to give her the telegram. She screamed and hid her face behind her palms the moment she opened the door and saw me. Not daring to come close, she snatched the telegram and left. A day went by, two, three; a week, two weeks. Every day, afraid that the girl might come to my room and see me, I dispatched the same telegram: “Can't come today, will come tomorrow.” I felt not the slightest pain, but I could not open my mouth to eat; my only nourishment was milk and lemonade, which I sucked in through a straw. Finally I could stand it no longer. I had read several psychoanalytical works by the famous disciple of Freud, Wilhelm Stekel, and I went to seek him out.
My psyche had inflicted this disease on me, though I did not know why. This much I divined: my psyche was to blame.

The learned professor began to hear my confession. I related my life history: how I'd been searching for a path of salvation ever since my adolescence; how I followed Christ for many years, but lately had found His religion too unsophisticated, too optimistic, and had left Him to follow the path of Buddha. . . .

The professor smiled.

“To search in order to find the world's beginning and end is a disease,” he said to me. “The normal person lives, struggles, experiences joy and sorrow, gets married, has children, and does not waste his time in asking whence, whither, and why. But you did not finish your story. You are still hiding something from me. Confess everything.”

I related how I met Frieda, and said we had arranged a tryst.

The professor burst into shrill, sarcastic laughter. I glanced at him with irritation. I had already begun to hate this man, because he was examining my secrets beneath his indiscreet magnifying glass, and struggling to force open all the barred and padlocked doors inside me.

“Enough! Enough!” he said, beginning to titter again in his sarcastic way. “This mask will remain glued to your face as long as you stay in Vienna. The disease you have is called the ascetics' disease. It is extremely rare in our times, because what body, today, obeys its soul? Have you ever read the saints' legends? Do you remember the ascetic who left the Theban desert and ran toward the nearest city because the demon of fornication had suddenly mounted him, and he felt compelled to sleep with a woman? He ran and ran, but just as he was about to pass through the city gates, he looked down and saw with terror that leprosy was spreading over his body. It was not leprosy, however; it was this disease, the same one you have. With such a revolting face, how could he present himself before a woman? What woman would find it possible to touch him? So he ran back to his hermitage in the desert and gave thanks to God for having delivered him from sin, whereupon God, according to the legend, forgave him and scraped the leprosy off his body. . . . Do you understand now? Plunged as it is in the Buddhist Weltanschauung, your soul—or rather what for you goes by the name of soul—believes that sleeping with a
woman is a mortal sin. For that reason it refuses to permit its body to commit this sin. Such souls, souls capable of imposing themselves to so great a degree on the flesh, are rare in our age. In my entire scientific career I have encountered only one other such case, that of an extremely upright, extremely pious Viennese lady. She loved her husband very much, but he was away at the front, and she chanced to meet a young man and fall in love with him. One night she was ready to surrender herself, but suddenly her soul rose up in revolt, opposing her. Her face became repulsively swollen, just as yours is now. In desperation she sought me out. I reassured her. ‘You'll be cured when your husband comes back from the war,' I told her, and indeed, as soon as her husband returned, in other words as soon as the danger of sin was past, her face regained its original beauty. Your case is the same. You will be cured as soon as you depart from Vienna and leave Frieda behind you.”

I did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, I said to myself, leaving in a state of stubborn vexation. I'll stay in Vienna, I'll stay and get better. . . . I remained for another month, but the mask did not melt away. I continued to send the daily telegram to Frieda: “Can't come today, will come tomorrow.” This tomorrow never arrived, however. One morning, having grown weary of the whole business, I got out of bed with the resolute determination to leave. I took my valise, descended the stairs, emerged into the street, and headed for the station. It was early morning and a cool breeze was blowing. Working-class men and women were racing to their jobs in merry flocks, still munching mouthfuls of bread. The sun had not come down into the streets yet. Several windows were being opened; the city was awakening. I walked with weightless steps, in a fine mood; I was awakening just like the city. I felt my face losing its burden as I proceeded. My eyes were being freed, they could open now. The swelling in my lips began to subside, and I started whistling like a child. The cool breeze passed over my face like a compassionate hand, like a caress. When I finally reached the station and took out my pocket mirror to look at myself, what joy, what good fortune! The swelling in my face had entirely disappeared; my former features—nose, mouth, cheeks—had returned. The demon had fled; once more I was a human being.

Ever since that day I have realized that man's soul is a terrible and dangerous coil spring. Without knowing it, we all carry a great
explosive force wrapped in our flesh and lard. And what is worse, we do not want to know it, for then villainy, cowardice, and falsehood lose their justification; we can no longer hide behind man's supposed impotence and wretched incompetence; we ourselves must bear the blame if we are villains, cowards, or liars, for although we have an all-powerful force inside, we dare not use it for fear it might destroy us. Rut we take the easy, comfortable way out, and allow it to vent its strength little by little until it too has degenerated to flesh and lard. How terrible not to know that we possess this force! If we did know, we would be proud of our souls. In all heaven and earth, nothing so closely resembles God as the soul of man.

F
ROM VIENNA
I hopped to Berlin. Although Buddha had quenched many of my inner thirsts, he was unable to extinguish my thirst to view as many more parts of the earth and as many more seas as I possibly could. He had given me what he himself termed the “elephant eye”—the ability to see all things as if for the first time and greet them, to see all things as if for the last time and bid them farewell.

I kept telling myself that the world was a specter and that men were wraiths, dew-beings, ephemeral children of the dew. Buddha, the black sun, had risen and they were melting into nothingness. But pity took possession of my soul, pity and love. If only I could hold those specters at the edge of my vision for a moment longer and keep them from expiring! Every last bit of my heart, I felt, had not been wrapped in the yellow robe. A blood-red heartbeat still remained; pounding obstinately, it refused to let Buddha take full possession of me. Inside me a Cretan was lifting his hand in revolt and refusing to pay even a brass farthing of tribute to the peaceable conqueror.

It was at Berlin that I came to realize all this. As I close my eyes now to recall my sins in that disagreeable city (mortal sins for a follower of Buddha), my memory overflows with laughter, fiery words, wonderfully warm nights passed with no thought of sleep, blossoming chestnut and cherry trees, insatiable Jewish eyes, the acrid smell of female armpits—and I am unable to place things in their proper order.

I thumb through yellowed notebooks in an an effort to remember what came first, what next, what vows we swore, what caused the separation. . . . Great indeed is the strength of the letters of the alphabet, those twenty-six miniature soldiers that stand at the edge of the cliff and defend man's heart at least for
some little time, preventing it from falling and drowning in the black, bottomless eye of Buddha!

O
ctober 2.
I've been wandering for three days now through Berlin's endless, monotonous streets. The chestnut trees have lost their leaves; there is a frigid wind; my heart has turned to ice. Today I passed a great doorway with a sign written in large letters: “Congress of Educational Reform.” It was snowing and I was cold, so I went in. The hall was full of teachers, a great crowd of men and women. I searched for a place to sit. Suddenly I saw an orange blouse gleaming between gray and black suit jackets. Just as the insect is attracted by the color of the flower, so I, in the same way, moved toward the girl with the orange blouse. The seat next to her was vacant; I sat down. One of the teachers was gesticulating deliriously—he shouted himself hoarse, drank a little water, calmed down somewhat, then worked up steam again, all about how he was going to change the school curriculum and forge a new German generation which would disdain both life and death. Here was yet another savior; he was struggling to save the world by conquering it.

I turned to my neighbor. Her hair was blue-black, her immense eyes black and almond-shaped, her nose slightly hooked. Her skin was swarthy, the color of old amber, with a slight splotchiness in the face. Leaning over, I asked her, “Where do you think I'm from?”

“From the land of the sun,” she replied, blushing strongly.

“That's right, from the land of the sun. I'm suffocating in here. Shall we go out and take a little walk?”

“Yes, let's.”

Once out in the street, she jumped, laughed, and shouted like a child given a new toy.

“My name is Sarita, and I'm Jewish and I write poems.”

We went into a park. The yellow leaves massed on the ground craunched beneath our feet. I placed my palm on her hair; it was warm, and soft as silk. Without speaking, the girl stopped and craned her neck as though listening intently to something.

“Your hand gives off a force,” she said. “I feel like a jug being filled at the fountain.”

It was nearly noon. “Let's go and eat,” I suggested. “A thick soup, nice and hot—to warm us.”

“This is a Jewish fast day. It's a sin to eat. I'm just as hungry and cold as you are, but it's a sin.”

“Let's sin then, so that we can repent afterwards and be pardoned by terrible Jehovah, your god.”

She seemed annoyed to hear me refer to her god in this jocular way.

“And who is your god?”

This made me wince. Instantaneously I sensed that I too was sinning against my god. All this time I had forgotten that those eyes, that hair, that amber skin was nothing but a specter, and I did not blow, did not want to blow, to dispel it.

“Dionysus?” asked the girl with a laugh. “The great drunkard?”

“No, no, someone else, someone even more terrible than your Jehovah. . . . Don't ask!”

I should have gotten up at that moment and left, but I pitied my body, pitied hers, and stayed.

“Recite one of your poems,” I said in order to divert my thoughts.

Her face beamed. Her voice became extremely caressive and embittered.

Exiles who have not realized yet

that exile is a home.

When we stride in new cities,

home walks next us like a sister.

Exiles who have not realized yet

that in our exiled hearts,

should a smile be granted us,

the Song of Songs begins.

Her eyes had filled with tears.

“Are you crying?” I asked, leaning close to her.

“No matter where you touch a Jew,” she answered, “you find a wound.”

O
ctober 3.
If only man could really preserve the intoxication! If only Dionysus were an omnipotent god! But the intoxication rapidly
disperses, the mind clears, and the warm, firm flesh becomes a specter once again. The next day my brain woke up. Eying me with disdain and severity, it shouted, Infidel, traitor, inconstant betrayer! I am ashamed to live and travel with you. Perhaps Buddha can forgive you, but I cannot. Do not step again into the orange-tinted snare.

Nevertheless, first thing in the morning I took the same route and returned to the Congress. I looked, but the orange color was nowhere to be seen. Though I wanted to rejoice, I could not. Once more I heard the big-sounding bombast. Many of the listeners were eating apples to calm their hunger; others were bent over taking notes, not missing a single word. Suddenly I had the presentiment of something like a warm breath behind me: a face ferreting me out and riveting its eyes upon me. Turning, I saw her at the far end of the hall. She was wearing a shabby shawl, dark olive in color, and had turned up her collar of napless fur because the room was cold. She smiled at me, her face beaming like a marble bust in sunlight.