The Book of Khalid (23 page)

“WHY THIS EXAGGERATED SENSE OF THINE importance,” Khalid asks himself in the K. L. MS., “when a little ptomaine in thy cheese can poison the source of thy lofty contemplations? Why this inflated conception of thy Me, when an infusion of poppy seeds might lull it to sleep, even to stupefaction? What avails thy logic when a little of the Mandragora can melt the material universe into golden, unfolding infinities of dreams? Why take thyself so seriously when a leaf of henbane, taken by mistake in thy salad, can destroy thee? But the soul is not dependent on health or disease. The soul is the source of both health and disease. And life, therefore, is either a healthy or a diseased state of the soul.

“One day, when I was rolling these questions in my mind, and working on a reed basket to present to my friend the Hermit as a farewell memento, his serving-monk brings me some dried figs in a blue kerchief and says, ‘My Master greets thee and prays thee come to him.’ I do so the following morning, bringing with me the finished basket, and as I enter the Hermitage court, I find him repairing a stone wall in the vineyard. As he sees me, he hastens to put on his cloak that I might not remark the sack-cloth he wore, and
with a pious smile of assurance and thankfulness, welcomes and embraces me, as is his wont. We sit down in the corridor before the chapel door. The odorous vapor of what was still burning in the censer within hung above us. The holy atmosphere mantled the dread silence of the place. And the slow, insinuating smell of incense, like the fumes of gunga, weighed heavy on my eyelids and seemed to brush from my memory the cobwebs of time. A drowsiness possessed me; I felt like one awaking from a dream. I asked for the water jug, which the Hermit hastened to bring. And looking through the door of the chapel, I saw on the altar a burning cresset flickering like the planet Mercury on a December morning. How often did I light such a cresset when a boy, I mused. Yes, I was an acolyte once. I swang the censer and drank deep of the incense fumes as I chanted in Syriac the service. And I remember when I made a mistake one day in reading the Epistle of Paul, the priest, who was of an irascible humour, took me by the ear and made me spell the words I could not pronounce. And the boys in the congregation tittered gleefully. In my mortification was honey for them. Such was my pride, nevertheless, such the joy I felt, when, of all the boys that gathered round the lectern at vespers, I was called upon to read in the
sinksar
(hagiography) the Life of the Saint of the day.

“I knew then that to steal, for instance, is a sin; and yet, I emptied the box of wafers every morning after mass and shared them with the very boys who laughed at my mistakes. One day, in the purest intention, I offered one of these wafers to my donkey and he would not eat it. I felt insulted, and never after did I pilfer a wafer. Now, as I muse on these sallies of boyish waywardness I am impressed with the idea that the certainty and daring of Ignorance, or might I say Innocence,
are great. Indeed, to the pure everything is pure. But strange to relate that as I sat in the corridor of the Hermitage and saw the light flickering on the altar, I hankered for a wafer, and was tempted to go into the chapel and filch one. What prevented me? Alas, knowledge makes sceptics and cowards of us all. And the pursuit of knowledge, according to my Hermit, nay, the noblest pursuit, even the serving of God, ceases to be a virtue the moment we begin to enjoy it.

“ ‘It is necessary to conquer, not only our instincts,’ he continued, ‘but our intellectual and our spiritual passions as well. To force our will in the obedience of a higher will, to leave behind all our mundane desires in the pursuit of the one great desire, herein lies the essence of true virtue. St. Anthony would snatch his hours of devotion from the Devil. Even prayer to him was a struggle, an effort not to feel the joy of it. Yes, we must always disobey our impulses, and resist the tyranny of our desires. When I have a strong desire to pray, I go out into the vineyard and work. When I begin to enjoy my work in the vineyard, I cease to do it well. Therefore, I take up my breviary. Do that which you must not do, when you are suffering, and you will not want to do it again, when you are happy. The other day, one who visited the Hermitage, spoke to me of you, O Khalid. He said you were what is called an anarchist. And after explaining to me what is meant by this—I never heard of such a religion before—I discovered to my surprise that I, too, am an anarchist. But there is this difference between us: I obey only God and the authority of God, and you obey your instincts and what is called the authority of reason. Yours, O Khalid, is a narrow conception of anarchy. In truth, you should try to be an anarchist like me: subordinate your personality, your will and mind and soul, to a higher will and intelligence, and
resist with all your power everything else. Why do you not come to the Hermitage for a few days and make me your confessor?’

“ ‘I do not confess in private, and I can not sleep within doors.’

“ ‘You do not have to do so; the booth under the almond tree is at your disposal. Come for a spiritual exercise of one week only.’

“ ‘I have been going through such an exercise for a year, and soon I shall leave my cloister in the pines.’

“ ‘What say you? You are leaving our neighbourhood? No, no; remain here, O Khalid. Come, live with me in the Hermitage. Come back to Mother Church; return not to the wicked world. O Khalid, we must inherit the Kingdom of Allah, and we can not do so by being anarchist like the prowlers of the forest. Meditate on the insignificance and evanescence of human life.’

“ ‘But it lies within us, O my Brother, to make it significant and eternal.’

“ ‘Yes, truly, in the bosom of Mother Church. Come back to your Mother—come to the Hermitage—let us pass this life together.’

“ ‘And what will you do, if in the end you discover that I am in the right?’

“Here he paused a moment, and, casting on me a benignant glance, makes this reply: ‘Then, I will rejoice, rejoice,’ he gasped; ‘for we shall both be in the right. You will become an anarchist like me and not against the wretched authorities of the world, but against your real enemies, Instinct and Reason.’

“And thus, now and then, he would salt his argument with a pinch of casuistic wit. Once he was hard set, and, to
escape the alternatives of the situation, he condescended to tell me the story of his first and only love.

“ ‘In my youth,’ said the Hermit, ‘I was a shoemaker, and not a little fastidious as a craftsman. In fact, I am, and always have been, an extremist, a purist. I can not tolerate the cobblings of life. Either do your work skilfully, devotedly, earnestly, or do it not. So, as a shoemaker, I succeeded very well. Truth to tell, my work was as good, as neat, as elegant as that of the best craftsman in Beirut. And you know, Beirut is noted for its shoemakers. Yes, I was successful as any of them, and I counted among my customers the bishop of the diocese himself. One day, forgive me, Allah! a young girl, the daughter of a peasant neighbour, comes into the shop to order a pair of shoes. In taking the measure of her foot—but I must not linger on these details. A shoemaker can not fail to notice the shape of his customer’s foot. Well, I measured, too, her ankle—ah, forgive me, Allah!

“ ‘In brief, when the shoes were finished—I spent a whole day in the finishing touches—I made her a present of them. And she, in recognition of my favor, made a plush tobacco bag, on which my name was worked in gold threads, and sent it to me, wrapped in a silk handkerchief, with her brother. Now, that is the opening chapter. I will abruptly come to the last, skipping the intermediate parts, for they are too silly, all of them. I will only say that I was as earnest, as sincere, as devoted in this affair of love as I was in my craft. Of a truth, I was mad about both.

“ ‘Now the closing chapter. One day I went to see her—we were engaged—and found she had gone to the spring for water. I follow her there and find her talking to a young man, a shoemaker like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler
there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, her lying lips, on his cheek! No, no; even then I did not utter a word. I could but cry in the depth of my heart. How can woman be so faithless, so treacherous—in my heart I cried.

“ ‘It was a terrible shock; and from it I lay in bed for days with chills and fever. Now, when I recovered, I was determined on pursuing a new course of life. No longer would I measure women’s feet. I sold my stock, closed my shop, and entered the monastery. I heard afterwards that she married that young cobbler; emigrated with him to America; deserted him there; returned to her native village; married again, and fled with her second husband to South Africa. Allah be praised! even He appreciates the difference between a shoemaker and a cobbler; and the bad woman He gives to the bad craftsman. That is why I say, Never be a cobbler, whatever you do.

“ ‘But in the monastery—draw near, I will speak freely—in the monastery, too, there are cobblers and shoemakers. There, too, is much ungodliness, much treachery, much cobbling. Ah me, I must not speak thus. Forgive me, Allah! But I promised to tell you the whole story. Therefore, I will speak freely. After passing some years in the monastery, years of probation and grief they were, I fell sick with a virulent fever. The abbot, seeing that there was little chance of my recovery, would not send for the physician. And so, I languished for weeks, suffering from thirst and burning pains and hunger. I raved and chattered in my delirium. I betrayed myself, too,
they told me. The monks my brothers, even during my suffering, made a scandal of the love affair I related. They said that I exposed my wounds and my broken heart before the Virgin, that I sinned in thought and word on my death-bed. Allah forgive them. It may be, however; for I know not what I said and what I did. But when I recovered, I was determined not to remain in the monastery, and not to return to the world. The wicked world, I disentangled myself absolutely from its poisoned meshes. I came to the Hermitage, to this place. And never, since I made my second remove until now, have I known disease, or sorrow, nor treachery, which is worse than both. Allah be praised! One’s people, one’s brothers, one’s lovers and friends, are a hindrance and botheration. We are nothing, nothing: God is everything. God is the only reality. And in God alone is my refuge. That is my story in brief. If I did not like you, I would not have told it, and so freely. Meditate upon it, and on the insignificance and evanescence of human life. The world is a snare, and a bad snare, at that. For it can not hold us long enough in it to learn to like it. It is a cobbler’s snare. The world is full of cobblers, O Khalid. Come away from it; be an ideal craftsman—be an extremist—be a purist—come live with me. Let us join our souls in devotion, and our hearts in love. Come, let us till and cultivate this vineyard together.’

“And taking me by the hand, he shows me a cell furnished with a hair-mat, a
masnad
(leaning pillow), and a chair. ‘This cell,’ says he, ‘was occupied by the Bishop when he came here for a spiritual exercise of three weeks. It shall be yours if you come; it’s the best cell in the Hermitage. Now, let us visit the chapel.’ I go in with him, and as we are coming out, I ask him child-like for a wafer. He brings the box straightway, begs me to take as much as I desire, and placing his hand on my
shoulder, encircles me with one of his benignant glances, saying, ‘Allah illumine thy heart, O Khalid.’ ‘Allah hear thy prayer,’ I reply. And we part in tears.”

Here Khalid bursts in ecstasy about the higher spiritual kingdom, and chops a little logic about the I and the not-I, the Reality and the non-Reality.—“God,” says the Hermit. “Thought,” says the Idealist, “that is the only Reality.” And what is Thought, and what is God, and what is Matter, and what is Spirit? They are the mysterious vessels of Life, which are always being filled by Love and emptied by Logic. “The external world,” says the Materialist—“Does not exist,” says the Idealist. “ ’Tis immaterial if it does or not,” says the Hermit. And what if the three are wrong? The Universe, knowable and unknowable, will it be affected a whit by it? If the German Professor’s Chair of Logic and Philosophy were set up in the Hermitage, would anything be gained or lost? Let the
I
deny the stars, and they will nevertheless roll in silence above it. Let the not-I crush this I, this “thinking reed,” and the higher universal I, rising above the stars and flooding the sidereal heavens with light, will warm, remold, and regenerate the world.

“I can conceive of a power,” writes Khalid in that vexing Manuscript, “which can create a beautiful parti-colored sun-flower of the shattered fragments of Idealism, Materialism, and my Hermit’s theology. Why not, if in the New World—” And here, of a sudden, to surprise and bewilder us, he drags in Mrs. Eddy and the Prophet Dowie yoked under the yoke of Whitman. He marks the
Key to Scripture
with blades from
Leaves of Grass
, and such fuel as he gathers from both, he lights with an ember borrowed from the chariot to Elijah. And thus, for ten whole pages, beating continually, now in the dark of Metaphysics, now in the dusk of Science;
losing himself in the tangled bushes of English Materialism, and German Mysticism, and Arabic Sufism; calling now to Berkeley, now to Hackel; meeting with Spencer here, with Al-Gazzaly there; and endeavoring to extricate himself in the end with some such efforts as “the Natural being Negativity, the Spiritual must be the opposite of that, and both united in God form the Absolute,” etc., etc. But we shall not give ourselves further pain in laying before the English reader the like heavy and unwieldy lumber. Whoever relishes such stuff, and can digest it, need not apply to Khalid; for, in this case, he is but a poor third-hand caterer. Better go to the Manufacturers direct; they are within reach of every one in this Age of Machinery and Popular Editions. But there are passages here, of which Khalid can say, ‘The Mortar at least is mine.’ And in this Mortar he mixes and titrates with his Neighbour’s Pestle some of his fantasy and insight. Of these we offer a sample: