Report to Grego (54 page)

I did not turn to see her a second time. I attempted to make my exit, but she overtook me in the corridor and gave me a slim volume of her poems. She langhed and cavorted, her intoxication of the previous day not having dissolved. But I was anxious to part with her and leave. The moment I began to bow in order to give her my hand, I saw her eyes regarding me questioningly, uncertainly, with just a shade of fear. Her body had grown even smaller, more hunched; she had shrunk into herself. My heart breaking with sympathy, I seized her by the upper back and kneaded her skinny shoulders. She screeched from contentment and pain.

“Why are you hurting me?” she asked, trying to escape.

“Because you're made from other soil, because you have another god, because all night long I was thinking of you. I wanted to ask you some questions—but you must tell the truth.”

“Why shouldn't I tell the truth? I'm not afraid of it. I'm a Jew.”

“What does your god order you to do, what duty does he impose on you? Before we go any further, this is what I must know.”

“Hate—that is the primary duty. Are you satisfied?”

Her features had suddenly become contorted. Although her thick lips no longer spoke, they still trembled. Two yellow eyes
and the gaping jaw of a tigress became visible behind the beautiful dark-complexioned face.

“Are you satisfied?” she hissed once more, provokingly.

I remembered Buddha's saying: “If we answer hate with hate, the world will never be free of hate.”

“Hate,” I replied, “is the servant that walks in front and cleans the road so that the master may pass.”

“And who is the master?”

“Love.”

The Jewess laughed sarcastically. “That's what your Christ bleats. As for us, our Jehovah commands, If someone knocks out one of your teeth, knock out a whole jawful in return! You are a lamb, I am a wounded she-wolf; we can never mix. It's a good thing we realized this before we joined our lips.”

“What have you got against the world? Why do you want to destroy it?”

“I doubt that you've ever gone hungry; no, not you. You've never slept beneath a bridge, never had your mother murdered in a pogrom! In short, you have no right to ask. This world—your world—is unjust and venal, but our hearts are not. I want to help my comrades destroy it and build a new world, one which will not bring shame upon our hearts.”

We strolled beneath the denuded trees. A few leaves still hung on at the crowns, but an icy gust came to shank them, and they settled on our heads and shoulders. The Jewess was shivering; her gloves were full of holes, her blouse made of cotton, her down-at-heel shoes on the verge of wearing through. I cast a sidewise glance at her eyes for a moment and saw with fright that they were pinned on me, burning with the hatred which filled them.

What this girl must have gone through in order to talk with such hate! Perhaps, I said to myself, it was because she feared for an instant that she might fall in love with a man from the enemy camp.

Her lips had turned blue with cold; her teeth were chattering. Feeling ashamed, I took off my fur overcoat and swiftly cast it across her shoulders before she had time to escape. She shook herself angrily, trying to throw it off, but I held it firmly on her and implored her to keep it.

She halted, as though unable to catch her breath. She had
ceased to resist. I felt my body heat leaving my overcoat and penetrating slowly, deeply, into her body. Her lips became red again; little by little her face regained its beauty. She leaned her arm on me. Her knees must have become paralyzed.

“It's good to be warm,' she murmured. “Life seems to change.”

My eyes nearly brimming with tears, I reflected, A little warmth, a little bread, a roof over your head, a kind word, and hate vanishes. . . .

We had reached her house.

“When shall I see you again?” I asked her.

“Take your coat,” she said. “I've just come to understand why everyone who has a fur coat talks the same way you do. Take it, because my heart is about to give out.”

“Not your heart, Sarita. Your hate.”

“They're the same. God bless cold and hunger. Without them I'd be engulfed in comforts. In other words, dead—a carcass. Goodbye!”

She did not offer me her hand. Opening her purse, she took out her key to unlock the door.

“When shall I see you again?” I repeated.

But her face had become a yellow mask of hate once more. Without answering, she opened the door and vanished into the darkness.

I never saw her again.

I locked myself in my room. My heart had turned into a sack of caterpillars. Suddenly the world had taken on flesh and bones again; it seemed truly to exist. The five thirsts had opened in my body and I began calling on Buddha to come and exorcise the Tempter. Once there was a great saint who after forty years of ascetic discipline still could not reach God. Something stood in his way preventing him. At the end of forty years he understood. It was a little jug which he greatly loved because it cooled the drinking water he stored in it. He smashed the jug and was immediately united with God.

I knew—knew that in my case the little jug was the girl's small irresistible body. If I in my turn wished to be united with God, I would have to obliterate this body which stood in the way. When a wild wasp slips into a beehive to pillage the honey, the workers rush upon it, swaddle its entire body in a net of fragrant wax, and
smother it. My net of wax consisted of words, verses, meter. With these hallowed winding sheets I would enwrap Sarita and prevent her from pillaging my honey.

The blood began to throb at my temples. I assembled my far-scattered thoughts, struggling to concentrate my strength on one body, one voice, two black insatiable eyes. I wanted to exorcise them, for they were separating me from Buddha.

M
obilizing words, I placed myself at their head and set out for war. I wrote, but the more I wrote the more my purpose shifted and my yearning broadened. Sarita fell further and further behind, grew increasingly smaller until she vanished, and an ascent flashed before me, a rocky ascent with a red track upon it and a man who was climbing—a simple hieroglyph done in a minimum of strokes. I recognized it as my life. Deciphering it, I saw how naively and with how many hopes I had set out; and which were the various way stations I halted at momentarily to catch my breath and work up new momentum—the self, the race, mankind, God; and how I suddenly discerned the supreme peak above me—the Silence, Buddha. Finally, I saw the yearning which began to rage inside me, the yearning to extricate myself forever from all deceptions, both mundane and celestial, and to succeed in reaching this desolate, uninhabited peak. . . . When I picked up and read the pages I had written—they were scattered on the floor—I was seized by terror. I had wanted to write an exorcism to obliterate Sarita, and instead I had written an exorcism to obliterate the entire cosmos! Buddha sat immobile and self-assured at the summit, watching my struggles at the base of the ascent and smiling with compassion and kindness.

Having established order over the age-old questions, having found words and solidified the answer, I felt at ease. Rising, I went outside to shake the numbness off my body, which had been locked indoors for so many days. Night had fallen; people must have already finished eating supper. As it was neither raining nor snowing, they had poured out into the streets. I saw colorful lights over a large entranceway, and multicolored placards announcing: “Dances of Java.” From inside I heard grave music full of passion. Men and women were entering. I entered too.

Of all the sights my soul has enjoyed, the dance and the star-filled heavens have always stood supreme. Never have wine, women, or even ideas thrown me so completely into a ferment-body, mind, and soul—as have these two. Thus I was delighted that on this night, after so many days of ascetic fasting, not only was my flesh going to shake off its numbness and enjoy itself, but also my mind and soul—all three of the co-travelers.

When I entered the hall, I found the dance already in progress. The lights were out, except for the mysterious blue-green spot which illuminated the stage, making it appear like the bottom of some far-distant oriental sea. A swarthy, delicately built adolescent wearing strange, stunning ornaments and a gold-green costume-like a male insect in summer rut—was dancing in front of a wheat-dark, thin-boned little woman. While she remained motionless, he danced and danced, displaying his litheness to the female, and how much strength and grace he had, and how worthy he was—he and no one else—of being chosen to couple with her and produce a son, so that these great virtues of litheness, strength, and grace might be transmitted to this son instead of perishing. The female stood immobile, looking at him, weighing him, trying to decide. Suddenly she did decide, and she threw herself into the dance. Frightened, the man stepped aside; now it was his turn to stand motionless and rapt, looking at the woman. She danced and danced in front of the terror-shaken man, opening her arms and pushing aside her veils so that her body glowed blue-green at one moment, faded away at the next. She approached him, pretending to fall into his embrace. He emitted a cry of triumph and spread his arms, but the woman escaped each time with a hiss and danced out of his reach.

Be it animals, birds, or humans, at each whirl of the dance the ephemeral masks are thrown off and behind all of them the same face is always revealed, the eternal face of love. As I watched the Javanese couple, I asked myself whether another dance beyond this one of love, the dance, let us say, of God, would be able in its whirling to throw off this love mask as well. What terrifying faee, I wondered, would then be revealed? I was struggling to capture the final face behind every mask, but could not do so. Would it, I wondered, be empty air—the face of Buddha? . . . The two dancers, the man and woman, had joined by this time; they were
dancing arm in arm now in a transport of ecstasy, leaping into the air, falling, surging high again, struggling amidst gasps of desire to surpass human boundaries.

Leaving, I roamed the streets until after midnight. Scattered snowflakes had begun to fall; I welcomed them with a feeling of relief, for they cooled my burning lips. New questions were rising inside me. The dance that evening had opened the old wellsprings in my bowels, the ones I thought had been stanched. I realized that the entrails of a Cretan are not easily emptied. Inside me were terrible ancestors who had not eaten as much meat or drunk as much wine as they craved, nor kissed as many women as they desired, and now they were bounding up fiercely in order to prevent me—and themselves—from dying. Truly, what business did Buddha have in Crete, what could he hope for . . . in Crete?

I gazed at the snowflakes eddying in the light of the streetlamps; they reminded me of the Javanese man and woman I had seen that evening, of the innumerable men and women who enact the dance—the pursuit, the battle, the desire—and in the final figure unite in order to engender a son and insure their immortality. The thirst for immortality is far more invincible than the thirst for death.

Completely exhausted, I lay down to go to sleep. And as frequently is my good fortune when my waking mind is tormented with questions and unable to find a way out, along came slumber to simplify them all and transform them into a tale. Such is the crown of the dormant stock of truth when it blossoms.

I dreamed that I was climbing a mountain. I had my crook across my shoulders in the manner of Cretan shepherds, and I was singing. I remember it was a folk song I loved very much:

I sowed a pepper seed on Margaro's lips.

It sprouted thickly, became a giant plant

—mown now by Greeks, carried by Turks,

and threshed by Margaro astride her mount.

Suddenly an old man darted out of a cave. His sleeves were tucked up, his hands covered with clay. Placing his finger on his lips to silence me, he commanded in a stern voice, “Stop singing! I
want quiet! Can't you see I'm working?” (Here he indicated his hands.)

“What are you making?” I asked him.

“Can't you see for yourself? Inside this cave I am fashioning the Redeemed.”

“The Redeemed? Who is redeemed?” I cried, and the old wounds began to flow again inside me.

“He who perceives, loves, and lives the totality!” replied the old man, hurriedly burrowing again into his cave.

“He who conceives, loves, and lives the totality . . .” All the next day I kept repeating those words from my dream, never tiring of them. Was this God's voice, I wondered, the voice which can be heard only at night when the loquacious brain has finally closed its mouth? I had always placed faith in the advice which the hours of darkness give us. Surely the night is more profound and holy than that nincompoop the day. The night takes pity on man.

Several days went by. As so often in my life, those two sleepless demons the Yes and the No were wrestling and scuffling inside me. Every time I find an answer to the questions tormenting me, I always accept it with uneasiness because I know that this answer, without fail, will spawn new questions. Thus the hunt conducted by the two demons inside me has no end. It seems that each answer hides future questions in the folds of its temporary certainty. That is why I always view its coming not with relief but with hidden disquietude.

Christ had hidden the seed of Buddha, thrust deep down within Him. What, I wondered, was Buddha hiding, wrapped deep inside his yellow robe?

O
ne rainy Sunday I was promenading slowly in a museum, looking at fierce African masks made of wood, hide, and human skulls. In an effort to unravel the mystery of masks, I said to myself, The mask is our true face; we are these monsters with their bloody mouths, hanging lips, and horrifying eyes. A repulsive mask howls behind the beautiful features of the woman we love, chaos behind the visible world, Buddha behind Christ's gentle face. Sometimes in the terrible moments of love, hate, or death the deceptive charm vanishes and we view truth's frightening countenance. With a shudder I remembered the Irish lass inside that little chapel atop
the Cretan mountain. As my lips touched hers, it seemed that her face turned to rot and oozed away, revealing a horrible, tormented, swooning monkey which filled me with disgust and fright. Ever since that day I have restrained myself, though with difficulty, from baring the true faces of mankind, because then love, courtesy, and mutual understanding would disappear. I pretend to believe in mankind's faces, and in this way I am able to live with my fellow human beings.