The Implacable Hunter (25 page)

‘He is in a fit of some sort,’ said Afranius, loosening the clothes at Paulus’s throat.

‘A fever, more likely…. Does he always wear a
goat’s-hair
shirt?’

‘How should I know?’

‘Offended some god, I dare say,’ said the officer,
unstopping
a bottle. ‘Doing penance.’

‘You never can tell.’

Paulus lay rigid as wood, his hands clenched, his eyes all blood and water.

‘This is a hell of a place to have a fit, sir,’ the officer said. I don’t like penitents in hair shirts – they are bad luck.’

‘This is a hell of a place for anything, damn it,’ said Afranius. ‘Can we camp here tonight?’

‘I suppose so, if we must, but it’s exactly what I’d hoped we shouldn’t have to do. The Azygos men like nothing better than this Pass after dark. They would attack from above.’ Azygos was a bandit, so named because he boasted that in all the world there was none to match him, either in ferocity or ugliness.

‘He is simply exhausted, ’said Afranius. Paulus groaned.

‘Well, we’ll rig a litter with cloaks and a couple of spears, and get him into the open that way,’ said the officer. ‘Once out of this Pass a day or two makes no great
difference
.’

They improvised this litter, then; and so they camped in the plain that evening. Afranius sat apart with Paulus while he froze and burned, started and dozed. Once he cried:
‘Anathema,
maranatha
– oh, for ever accursed in the
presence
of the Almighty God is Saul of Joseph of Tarsus! Cursed is Saul because he has murdered his father, cursed is Saul because he has lain with his mother, cursed is Saul because he has slain himself! Cursed is he, because he has shed the blood of his brother, cursed in the presence of the Tablets of the Law!’

‘What does he say?’ the officer asked, who happened to be at hand.

‘Talking formal Hebraic,’ said Afranius.

Paulus raved on: ‘Guilty be his ignorance and ignorant be his innocence! Innocence be his guilt, and honour be his
shame, for ever and for ever! … Who casts out Saul? I cast out Saul! What is your name? Saul. Who is your father? Joseph! Joseph? Who is your mother? Jaël, Jaël is my mother, a virgin unbroken, unpierced as an eardrum! Then who is your wife, your wife? Oh, Jaël is my wife! Then cursed be Joseph, your father, who begot you on Jaël! Oh abomination! … Within the two triangles of David lies the hexagon of the bee, and sealed therein the worm, the worm clogged with honey and blind….’ He caught his breath.

‘Where is Afranius?’ he asked.

‘Here, son, here,’ Afranius said.

‘I am blind, said Paulus.

‘I have put a wet napkin on your silly eyes,’ said Afranius.

‘No, no, I am blind. Only at the back of my eyes a fire burns, and there is something that crawls….’

‘That’s all right, old fellow,’ said Afranius. ‘Just take it easy. The pipe the gods feed the mind through is narrow enough at the best of times, and you have stretched yours rather fine. If there is something on your mind, tell me about it some other time. Rest now.’

‘No, no, I must go to Damascus. Why, what was I saying?’

‘Nothing much. You were elaborating Sophocles.’

‘Sophocles? What have I to do with Sophocles? I dare say I must have been a little light in the head. It was the
reflection
off the soldiers’ armour. It is very bad for the eyes…. Do you know what? When I have the say in the matter, I think I shall have soldiers’ armour painted. Not with images. I mean clear green. The soldiers will like that. “Hurrah for Paulus! No more sanding, no more burnishing with ashes!” – that’s what they’ll say. What? …’

He was talking, now, to some imaginary interlocutor. ‘… But
I
say
green,
sir! Paint costs more than sand? Never mind, the enemy pays. And the time thus saved can be spent in javelin-practice upon a dummy Nazarene…. Only first,
I must get this wax out of my eyes. Only give me time to get out of this hexagon.

‘Yes, Gamaliel, yes, yes; I have done unto others that which is hateful to myself, and I do to myself that which is hateful to others. But all man-made laws are mutable. Think, and you will see that this must be so, for if there were
nothing
but black and white there would be no need for the Law, only for the Judges. Would you accuse the Almighty of superfluity? I have you there, hah? …

‘Hence, gentlemen, there
is
such a thing as green. What do you say, Nun? Can a blind man, then, be discerning, just, and righteous?
What
is green, you ask? …’ Afranius held a cup of wine to his lips. Paulus spat it out in a spray. He went on in two different voices:

‘What is green? Grass is green…. Green is sharp at the edges, then? In Galilee they circumcise boys with a stretched blade of grass. Then the grass becomes red. What is red? Blood is red…. What is blood? Blood is salt…. Then salt is red? No, salt is white…. What is salt? The sea is salt. Then the sea is white? Nay, the salt sea is green…. Hence, blood is green, then. No, blood is red, I say!

‘But blood is salt. Tears are salt. Then tears are red? … Tears have no colour. But what is green? A thorn is green. Then green is pain? Not so, pain has no colour…. Green is pain, and pain is tears and tears are salt; then pain is salt? … No, salt is life…. Then pain is life, and life is green? Some life is green, all flesh is grass…. Life is green, but it cuts, then? … The soft moss is green. Then green is cool? … Yes, green is cool…. A shadow is green? A stone is green? … A shadow has no colour, but a stone is red…. Then pain is red, and not green; but what is red? A rose is red…. Thus, pain smells sweet? Nay, pain smells of sweat…. But sweat is salt, and so are tears, and so is blood, and salt is life; then life is white….’

A pause, while Paulus writhed in his blanket. Then:

‘Again you ask, what is white, then? There is white and there is white. There is rose-white, like a girl’s skin, and there is dead-white like lime; and there is blue-white like a child’s eyes; and living white like lily, and grey white like salt, and clean white like snow, and dying white like a root that lives in the dark…. What is white white? White white is
nothing
at all, it is death…. Death too is white, then? Then what is black? … Oh, there is black and there is black. There is living black like Dionë’s eyes, and there is dying black, like a bruise; there is blue black like Dionë’s hair, and red black like Stephanas’s blood; and there is shining black like a written word, and dull black like charcoal doomed to the fire; and high black like the night, and low black like the pit, and green black like gangrene; there is rich black like silk, and poor grey black like the goat’s-hair of the
tentmakers
…. But black, what is
black
black? That is nothing at all, it is death…. White is death, black is death? Then death is life and black is white, but each being nothing,
nothing
at all, what then? …’

Afranius wrote as much of this as he could remember. He heard the mutter and the clank of the changing guard, which meant that four hours had passed since they had camped, and he was very tired.

‘Then since there is no such thing as nothing at all …’ Paulus said, in a dreary, fitful voice. Afranius slept a little, while Paulus, he supposed, talked on and on, being in that state of false concentration in which a man may carefully take a handful of flowers to pieces and make senseless
geometrical
patterns with the petals; or, with the nicest
discrimination
, gather pebbles of a certain shape and colour, in order to throw them away; or, awaiting some belated event, resolve to stand at one spot until exactly two hundred and twenty-two women have passed, no more, no less. He was awakened, he wrote, by a silence.

Paulus was sitting up and staring into the shadows beyond
the fire. Afranius looked in that direction, and saw nothing but the dim form of a sentry leaning on his spear. But Paulus’s eyes seemed to follow somebody’s approach: he raised his gaze as if to keep it on some face. His hand went back very slowly. Afranius could see the lower whites of his eyes.

‘Who is this who comes?’ Paulus asked, in a harsh whisper.

‘Lie down,’ said Afranius. ‘The dawn is coming, and
nothing
more. Sleep.’

But Paulus talked over Alfranius’s shoulder, and past him. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.

If it were a ghost, Afranius wrote, then it must have been one of the harmless, or even benign, ghosts; for he felt, heard and saw nothing. Paulus’s head was forward, now, and he was listening, and as he listened his face fell slack with incredulity.

‘Say that again!’ he said.

There was another silence. Then: ‘Afranius, call the guard!’

‘Rest, Paulus, rest, there is nobody,’ said Afranius, wearily.

‘Hush a moment, Afranius,’ said Paulus, then to the
darkness
: ‘Repeat that!’

A silence, all-pervading. ‘Yes, I believe you are!’ said Paulus, suddenly; and was somehow tongue-tied for the time being.

Now, wrote Afranius, weariness, the firelight, and the subtle shadows must have played a trick with him. He was looking at Paulus, whose head-dress had fallen back,
uncovering
his wiry, dishevelled hair, a lock of which fell across his forehead. As he looked, Paulus’s hair became smoother, for all the world as if some invisible hand were lightly caressing his head, while some folds in his sleeve straightened
themselves
and then folded again, as if a hand were passing over his shoulder and down his arm.

‘Because –’ Paulus began, as if in ready reply to some simple question; then stopped. He listened again, and said again, very hesitantly: ‘Because …’

Then he bowed his head, and said, shamefaced, like a respectable man asked for an explanation of something
unseemly
said or done when he was drunk: ‘I have no answer. I do not know.’

And he fell back – or something lowered him back – and he closed his red eyes and was peacefully asleep.

They carried Paulus most of the following day, but in the late afternoon he said: ‘Why, my eyes are clear again!’ So they were, clear and steady, with the fever gone out of them, and the soldiers were glad to set him down and let him remount his horse and ride.

‘Are you sure you are strong enough?’ Afranius asked.

‘Thanks, thanks, yes, stronger than ever. I have been mad as a dog, I fear; but now I am in my right mind. Afranius, if in my madness I said anything to offend you, I humbly implore your forgiveness.’

‘Bah! For my part, if I spoke a little hastily to you, forget it, Paulus, forget it. No hard feelings.’

‘Oh, but my kind Afranius, you never said a hundredth part of what I deserve. I am a little man in every way, and you have a good heart,’ said Paulus.

The astonished Afranius could only say ‘Bah!’ again. He was more surprised when they pitched camp for the night, and the fires were lit. Paulus took out of a leather box several handfuls of documents, and read them carefully. Misery and distaste made crescents of his eyes and mouth. Stirring the fire with a stick he dropped the parchments into the flames, piece by piece. He explained: ‘My notes, my memoranda and my lists.’

‘Nazarene?’ Afranius asked.

Paulus nodded. ‘I have committed everything to memory. It’s safer there. I shall not need this impedimenta now.’

‘Others might,’ said Afranius.

‘Yes, I know,’ said Paulus. ‘You will sleep soundly tonight, Afranius?’

‘Like a log, unless I have to put fresh wet napkins on your head every five minutes.’

‘I am perfectly cool now.’

‘Well and good. But that was a tough bout you had – short and sharp. You had better take things a little easier in Damascus.’

‘I promise faithfully not to distress you in Damascus, dear Afranius.’

‘You had better not. Good night, my boy.’

‘God bless you, Afranius.’

And when Afranius was awakened by the trumpet at dawn, Paulus was gone…. ‘Simply gone,’ Afranius wrote: a sentry had seen him walking away after midnight, wearing a
sand-coloured
woollen cloak and carrying his stick.

His clothes, jewels and business documents were all in order in their cases, together with his purse, which was well filled. But he had left in Afranius’s helmet a letter, rolled up and thrust through that sapphire ring Barbatus had given him. It was written in neat, formal Greek, on a sheet of parchment torn out of a flat, stitched account-book, and it said:

‘Afranius my friend,

‘As you lay asleep I kissed your forehead in farewell. Waste no time and risk no life trying to find me, for even if you found me and took me with you by force, I should surely go away again. Have no fear for me. I am safe, now, who was heretofore in danger. I go to beg forgiveness and make atonement, my heart being open to a purer love and my eyes to a higher duty than I owe to my father, my mother, my wife, my friends and Rome. Do not seek me. I am not lost, but found. Do not mourn me, for I am not
dead. I am born. I was not struck blind by that white Light in the Pass. I was struck with sight. As the light of the lamp to the babe weeping out of the womb so the light of God’s Truth to the man groping out of the world.

‘Tell the well-beloved Diomed that I would to God our roads lay together. But he must follow my path, now, if that is to be; and so must you, Afranius; for Jesus lives, and I follow him.

‘Wear this ring, and think sometimes of me.

Paulus.’                  

And when Afranius suggested that they search the countryside for Paulus, the officer in command replied, very properly:

‘No sir! Not if he were my brother. He may be twenty miles away by now in any of thirty directions. I have my duty to my men, among other duties. The whole land is
rat-holed
with caves and as full of ravines as a badly-fired brick is of cracks. The gods have touched this gentleman here –’ he pointed to his forehead ‘– and I have no authority to waste Rome’s time and Rome’s men looking after those whom the gods would cast away. We march to Damascus.’

And to Damascus they went forthwith.