Chapter 73
Out they went by the Fish Gate. The countryside opened before them, the pungent world of the hills and valleys lay silent in the moonlight. As they passed through the gate it was immediately shut behind them, and city, fire, people and dogs were enclosed by the massive walls. Yehuda breathed the air in deeply, and his heart was eased.
“Are you taking me to some summer house or farm?” he asked inquisitively, and he slipped his arm tremulously round her waist and over her hips, like a teenager.
“Just be patient,” she laughed. She smothered him with her strong, all-pervading perfume and pressed her thigh to his side. “Believe me, my dear. You weren’t so happy in your mother’s womb. We aren’t going far. Be careful, the path’s narrow. I’ll go in front again.”
She ran ahead agile as a goat along the rough, twisting path through the bushes at the foot of the city wall. She stopped now and then and waited for Yehuda, and sometimes held out her hand, her soft, cushioned, scented hand.
On they walked this way and that in the undergrowth, and the silvery leaves of the oaks shimmered.
“What’s your name?” asked Yehuda, now more cheerfully.
“Adila, Adila, and I was born inSyria. My father was a rich landowner . . .” she began, and leant her head on Yehuda’s shoulder.
But he was not interested in that. They all came from wealthy homes, and they were all born inSyria. He could have told the whole tale word for word. He listened with one ear and thought how similar this Adila was to his mother in her young days, to Mariam, Martha and that other woman who had died such a terrible death.
“Here we are. Here’s the entrance. Get the flint out and light the lamp.”
Yehuda caught his breath and involuntarily swallowed. A dark opening gaped among the bushes, deep and black. He stood there startled, stared into it, his face pale in the moonlight.
“Oy, woman,” he groaned nervously, “where’ve you brought me?”
“Don’t say you’re afraid?”
Adila laughed out loud and rocked lightly to and fro on the heels of her red sandals.
“Oy vey, the little coward, the little baby! Don’t start again, d’you hear. Light the lamp, little boy. You’ll soon see, it’s like a palace. It’s not a cave, it isn’t Sheol, my dear, what an idea, it’s a palace. Light the lamp, I tell you!
Yehuda sat down on a rock and stared dizzily into the dark hole, but Adila held the lamp out to him and urged him to light it quickly.
“How long have I got to wait? Why have I come here with you out of town? The gate’s shut now, do you suppose I’m going to hang about with you in the bushes all night?”
“Why’ve you brought me to the cave?” Yehuda groaned. “This cave . . .”
“What cave? Where’s there a cave? You’re not well, my dear. Stop talking and let’s be going.” She squatted down at Yehuda’s side and smoothly extended her bare legs from under her long skirt. They were like Martha’s, muscular, smooth, slender and firm. She clasped his tousled head to her, pressed it to her between her warm, soft, perfumed breasts. Her clever fingers stroked the back of his neck like that of a nervous animal being led under the knife. She cooed, murmured and whispered into his ear. “Why’re you so afraid, my dear? This isn’t a cave, it isn’t, believe Adila. Light the lamp, let’s just go, I’ll hold your hand so you don’t trip, I’ll take you to a nice, quiet place, don’t be silly, my dear, come along. See how much you enjoy yourself. I’ll give you a good time like no other woman ever. I’ll take my clothes off and hold you in my arms . . . Come on, don’t just sit there!”
At her husky murmuring the blood came to Yehuda’s head. His tongue dried up. He could hear the even, firm beat of her heart between the two swelling breasts, feel the warmth of her body and her intoxicating scent. He stroked her bare thigh, it was taut and rounded, her calf youthfully firm, her foot small and arched.
He made up his mind, pulled up his leather bag, took out flint, steel and tinder and made fire. His hands shook a little, but now it was with desire.
“See, now you’re getting the idea,” she praised him like a mother her child.
Carefully she held the lamp and blew on the wick. A pale, trembling little flame arose in the moonlight.
Adila took the bird-shaped clay lamp in her left hand, with her right took Yehuda’s left and carefully led him into the low opening.
The lamplight flickered on a snow-white stone wall, casting long shadows on the stony floor. Down they went along a steep, head-high passage. Down, down and down.
It was not indeed a cave but a man-made cavity. At the end of the steep passage a huge hall opened before them, so big that they could not see the other end, a hall carved into the snowy white rock. Yehuda, a stonemason, realised at once that its walls had been shaped in the course of timeless ages, and that it stretched unseen deep beneath the city. The floor was of fine, floury, white powder, soft as a carpet, and absorbed the sound of their footsteps. The light of the lamp shone golden on the white wall like a light golden mist and long-legged shadows emerged from the dark and receded back. The unknown quarrymen had cut something like ribs into the roof – and the corridors of the subterranean palace gaped like the mouths of a series of streets. The silence was infinite, not a breath of air moved, the stone walls stretched away rigidly and dreamily, the deep corridors opened and vanished. It was a palace inhabited by silent shadows, where an invisible king ruled. Here there penetrated no sound, music, speech, bustle or cries from the world of light, but shadows flitted about silently like spirits.
Neat little recesses equidistant one from another were sunk into the walls. They were former places for lamps, the smoke from which had stained the white stone. In other places mighty cubes had been cut out, some of them still not detached, others isolated like Roman sarcophagi.
Adila proudly placed the lamp in a little recess and looked at Yehuda with a certain pleasure, as if welcoming him as a guest in her house. Then she sat down on a block of stone and smiled craftily.
“Where are we?” whispered Yehuda, as if reluctant to wake the king or god that slept there in the depths, and his courtiers.
“This place is a thousand-year-old, or even older,” she replied quite loudly, like one that knew all the ins and outs and was not afraid of the inhabitants. “You can speak up, even shout if you like. Isn’t it lovely? I’m not sure, but they say it used to be Solomon’s quarry. This is where the stone was quarried for building the first Mishkan, the real one. Over there,” she made a vague gesture, “a very long corridor leads under the Mishkan. It’s blocked off by a brick wall. They say that’s where Yirmiyahu Moshe hid his sacred vessels, the treasure of the Mishkan and the holy Chest . . . But I don’t know about that, I’ve only heard it said. I’m an ignorant woman about this. Tie a rope round your neck rather than teach a woman. Come on, then, sit by me.”
But Yehuda did not sit by her. He walked up and down in the white hall, gazing at the walls. It was as if Solomon’s masons had ceased working the day before, and the marks of their hands were almost warm on the rock. Their chisels possibly lay abandoned in the dust of the floor. Their lamps might have still been there somewhere. They had just gone to eat, or to break off for Sabbath eve, and might come back at any moment and continue working. And yet there were in this place a thousand years of silence and stillness. Yehuda stood rigid, the words of the Scriptures going round and round in his mind like bits of wood whirled up and down by a flood. He looked thoughtfully into the distance. Suddenly the pertinent text came to him: ‘And when the House was builded, it was builded of stones of the quarry hewed entire, so that the sound of neither hammer nor axe nor of any iron tool was heard at the building thereof’. So this was where Hiram’s Phoenician master-builders had worked.
Again and again he looked at the amazing cavern. He was no longer tense, and for a while his desires too were abated. The white subterranean palace was so fascinating a sight that at that moment he could think of nothing at all. Gradually he also became accustomed to the silence, the like of which he had never experienced. The city, the world of men, was far, far away. Somewhere, on Chanan’s courtyard, a fire was blazing, armed attendants were lounging about and laughing beside it, and that man was standing, bound, before his judges. But perhaps it wasn’t true at all, perhaps it was just a dream or a vision, and truth was here, where spirits of the age of Solomon fluttered in the deserted, dark streets and corridors of the underworld. Here the once mighty empire of Yahwe lived on, and what was up above was a mirage.
When he had considered it all the silence was filled with a quiet whispering. He was alone, alone with this woman, who was real warm flesh and blood.
He stood in front of her as she sat there and looked at her. She was beautiful. She had pushed back the ample, red striped kerchief on her head and the ringlets of her gleaming raven hair framed her regular, brown face, and her big dark eyes with their long lashes had grown larger still in the feeble light of the lamp. Her neck rose from the folds of her dress, rounded and smooth like the work of a Greek sculptor. She had unfastened her shimla, and her breasts were taut and trembling beneath her snow white kuttoneth. Her waist was willowy and slender, and Yehuda’s head swam at the sight of the golden waist and full breasts. Her jewellery too set off her beauty in amazing fashion. A ring of pale gold matched the light curve of her nose, earrings shone on both sides of her face, a gold chain framed her neck intriguingly and bracelets hung loose on her wrists. He sat beside her and looked her in the face. If she removed the mascara from her eyebrows, the rouge from her lips and just left the jewellery she would be a remarkable blend of his mother, Yudith, Mariam and Martha.
“Shall I take my clothes off, or are you still thinking about it?” asked Adila in challenging tone, and with a practised movement loosened her girdle. Her robes fell away, and only her fine woollen kuttoneth remained clinging to her, loose yet taut, and her golden brown body strained against the thin material.
Yehuda found his tongue.
“I suppose you’re surprised that a pauper, in these wretched rags, a homeless tramp, who’s got nothing, only this empty begging-bowl on his belt and a few silver coins . . . Are you surprised that he’s sitting with you now in this underground palace and thinking how lovely you are?”
In his excitement he stood up, took a few steps and clutched suddenly at his forehead. He stopped in front of her and gave her such a burning look that she involuntarily covered her knees.
“Oy, don’t go thinking that these awful clothes . . . this begging-bowl . . . this uncut hair . . . What do you think, then, what am I?”
Adila smiled, then frowned. She looked Yehuda coolly over from head to foot.
“Why do you care about what I think you are?”
“Don’t beat about the bush, woman!” exclaimed Yehuda. His voice echoed eerily in the depths of the dark passages. “Who do you take me for? What? Tell me!”
“An Ebionite[1] , but a very odd one, a very well educated Ebionite. Come on, now, stop talking! It’s all just rubbish.”
“Wait, wait a moment,” Yehuda raised a finger. “I couldn’t bear it if you took me for some nondescript, dirty tramp. Or the stupid disciple of some half-gentile nabi.”
“What happened to your hand?”
“My hand?” Yehuda lifted his wrist and looked at it. “It’s swollen. I’ve done a lot of walking and I’ve been gripping my staff tightly. That’s what’s caused it. I’m always massaging it, but it won’t pass off. It’s nothing. I’m not going to do any more walking.”
“What happened to your foot, then?” she asked inquisitively but gently, not wishing to upset him.
“Oy, yes, my foot . . .” Yehuda sighed sadly. “I tripped up. Twisted it. But never mind, it’s getting better. I’ve been able to walk all the same. Up to Kafarnahum, the Kinnereth region, then to the top of Hermon, to Paneas, where the Jordan emerges from a dark cave . . . then back again, to Khorzin, Tiberias, Gadara, Nezereth, Shamron, Yericho . . . all over the place. But I tell you, no more walking for me. Tomorrow I take off these rags” – he grasped his shimla and shook it in disgust. “I’m throwing the begging-bowl away,” he hit it, almost broke it. “I’m getting my beard decently trimmed,” he sank his quivering fingers into it. “I’ll put a smart shimla on my shoulders, silk, the real thing fromMesopotamia. I’ll oil myself with the finest oil. You wouldn’t know me if you saw me. I’m not going to wear these rags much longer. And I’m not doing any more walking. You’re the golden gate through which I’m stepping into the good life! In the morning I’ll knock on the High Priest’s door, say a name, and the door will immediately open to me . . . and by the time I come away, oy, you’ll not imagine! I’ll go home fromJerusalemriding a camel, and I came here limping on foot. A camel, a Bactrian camel. And servants will go with me with laden donkeys, more than you ever saw. I tell you, you wouldn’t know me.”
“I love the dawn,” said she, a little sarcastically, but Yehuda did not notice the scorn.
“I’m a miserable, lame, ragged man with a swollen hand,” he went on contemptuously, but his eyes gleamed feverishly like a drunken man’s. “Oy, not for much longer, not for much longer! And if you could have seen me when I was rich, I used to carry wool, salt, silk, ivory by the caravan-load . . . My ships used to go on the sea. I had land, camels, donkeys, white oxen, Achaean sheep . . . Clothes, gold. But one day, more then three years ago now . . .”
“Yes, my dear, I know. You tripped up and twisted your ankle. Since then you’ve had a limp. Come on.”
“That’s true, I tripped up, but what do you think, can you wipe out your past?”
‘He’s mad, possessed, or he’s on some very mysterious, important business,’ thought Adila. She looked at Yehuda with heightened curiosity.
“Is this the place to ask a question like that, for goodness sake? she laughed aloud, dangled her legs, leant forward to put her elbows on her knees, cupped her face in her hands. Her golden brown breasts jutted from her kuttoneth. “Here, of all places? You’re in a thousand-year-old palace, everything here’s a thousand years old! In this classy bedroom?”
“Yes, this is the very place. And it’s here that I’m telling you, woman, that you can wipe out your past. You don’t believe that? Look at me. I’ve done it. I’ve done it by a real act, if you must know. I’ve crushed the Serpent’s head! Because in case you don’t know, you ignorant woman, the Serpent had raised itself a nabi, was threatening Jerusalem, the Mishkan, the whole of Israel, Adonai himself, blessed be his name for ever. It wanted no stone to be left on stone, the gentiles to trample the men and woe betide pregnant women and mothers nursing children. But rejoice, daughter ofJerusalem, rejoice, virgin of Sion! For I, the wretched Ebionite, have crushed the Serpent’s head. I have savedIsraelandJerusalemand the Mishkan. The mothers, the virgins and you too, Adila. And so I deserve the Mesopotamian robe, the camel, the escort . . . Yes,” he shouted, and the corridors re-echoed it, “rejoice, daughter ofJerusalem, rejoice greatly! Thy king has come to thee, he shall save thee with justice and triumph!” He fell silent, looked fixedly at the woman as she sat there calmly, then quietly added: “I’m telling you this, Adila, so that you won’t think me a ragged, wandering Ebionite.”
He drew himself upright and looked at her proudly.
“I could tell straight away that you aren’t what you seem,” Adila indulged him. “Your face is like a wild boar’s! You’re a great man! A remarkable man!”
“A nabi fromGalileehas been curing the sick,” Yehuda began again secretively. “Driving out evil spirits by the power of Baal-Zebub, performing miracles, casting spells. Once, for example, he calmed a thunderstorm. I was actually there and nearly got drowned. He’s a black magus, even greater than Shimon. One man had passed away, and he brought him back to life on the fourth day. That too I saw. He stepped out of the tomb as if nothing had happened to him. That nabi was after power, he announced that he was the Anointed One. Wanted to sit in the High Priest’s place. The High Priest’s!” he exclaimed, and the corridors boomed in echo. “But he was only the bastard of a former daughter of Levi and a Roman soldier. But I, I knew who he was! I, I alone of so many! I’ve savedIsraelfrom him. Now he’s under arrest,” he added more quietly, so as not to disturb the peace of the tunnels. “He’ll be condemned and then . . .”
She listened to him wide-eyed. She sat leaning forward, elbows on knees, face cupped in hands. She looked at him as if stripping him, as if wanting to see the Ebionite without his rags, in his true colours. Her rouged lips smiled an enigmatic smile.
“I see, my dear. And now you’re afraid, eh?”
“The supporters of the Serpent are sure to be up in arms. The city may be in flames above our heads, people slaughtering one another. But rejoice, daughter of Sion! Adonai lives, blessed be his name for ever. He has trampled the Serpent, and it’s gone back to the depths where it lay chained for a thousand, a hundred thousand years. The great conspiracy will collapse. The nabi’s followers are running, like those that were with him when he was arrested. Oy, you should have seen them! They threw away their swords, hid in the bushes, climbed over the wall! Nobody stayed with him. He relied on Kefa, so I did likewise!”
He fixed his darkly gleaming gaze on her. He said nothing for a long time.
“What’s this nabi called that you’ve crushed?” she asked.
“Yeshuah bar Yosif,” replied Yehuda quietly, but even so the sounds of the name were whispered back from the throats of the corridors like a wind.
“And what’s your name?”
“My name? Mine?” he hesitated about saying it, and his eyes gleamed suspiciously. “My name is . . . Eleazar ben Yehuda.”
Every time that he stopped speaking from the streets and corridors, from the whole invisible empire, voices croaked and whispered ten, a hundred, a thousand Yehudas. And if excitement got the better of him the whole hidden underworld, like a living town, rattled and rumbled.
“Do you know that you’re sitting here,woman?” he asked thoughtfully, quietly, so as not to stir the spirits in alarm. “But never mind. I was weak, I lost my senses. Later I began to think calmly. That nabi taught that the Kingdom of God was here, man could get to know God, and then would never die and would know everything, see everything, become omnipotent, eternal, immortal . . . Did you ever hear such dreadful blasphemy? I’m not saying it, he did. But I’ve savedIsraelfrom him.”
Again his voice resounded far in the darkness. A whole host of Yehudas repeated his words.
“That’s very remarkable, my dear,” she whispered admiringly. “Did he perform miracles? Was he a magician? How could they arrest him, then? Why didn’t he put a spell on the men that came for him? Oy, if I had magic powers! I’d just wave a hand, like with a sickle, and they’d go down like corn being cut.”
“He might have, I was afraid,” exclaimed Yehuda, and the unseen people of the empire of stone howled back ‘afraid . . . afraid . . . “Do you know what fear of death is? I do. It’s when you see your own body unburied . . . jackals, wolves, dogs tearing at it in a ditch . . . and your son, little Eleazar, dragging himself starving from door to door, and being driven away! But that nabi proclaimed that he’d conquered the world! But it didn’t happen like that! Because I stood up to him for the sake of Adonai, and I won. I won!”
The unseen Yehudas called back from the depths ‘I won . . . I won . . .’
“It’s very strange that the nabi didn’t defend himself,” said Yehuda then, quite quietly. “Whom were they looking for? Yeshuah, the nazarite . . .”
“He was a nazarite?”
“Yes, but what sort of nazarite? He drank wine, didn’t fast. Paid no attention to what was kosher or unclean. Went about with all kinds of tramps, semi-pagans, fishermen, tax-collectors, and all manner of women. Yes, ‘I am he,’ that’s what he said. And he went up to them and held out his hands to be tied up. ‘I am he,’ that’s all he said.”
“I am he,” she whispered to herself, and was transported. Her eyes glowed as if she had drunk wine, and the gentle throbbing of her heartbeat could be seen through her shift. Her red heels tapped rhythmically on the soft carpet of dust.
“’I am he’, that’s what he said, and walked up to them. I am the vine. I am the good shepherd, I am the living bread. I am the truth and the life. He could also have said ‘I am Sylvanus, I am Attis, I am Aten, I am Tammuz, I am Usiri! And Dionysos! And the Serpent which Moshe lifted up in the wilderness! He was everything! The Anointed One, the Liberator. The Master, whom the Father had sent. Oy, I’m not saying that, he did! The bastard son of a temple woman and a Roman soldier!”
When his voice had died way in the depths a long silence arose. He paced this way and that, tugged at his beard, his excitement refusing to die down. The girl’s watchful eye followed his every movement, but as if she were seeing not only him but someone else too, beyond the walls. Her red heels tapped constantly at the carpet of dust.
“You really hate the nabi,” she tossed at him casually.
“I hate him! I do! Because he destroyed for ever people’s faith in the Mashiakh!”
The many, many unseen Yehudas hooted back the impassioned words, and after that a still, profound silence fell, greater than before.
“Well, now you know who I am,” said Yehuda, when he had calmed down a little. “Not the ragged tramp, the Ebionite, that I look. I’m the saviour ofIsrael. Now you can see why I didn’t want to go to a strange house with you, why I didn’t want to stay in the city. That nabi’s arm is long. He’s spread a wide network on the earth, it reaches everywhere . . . But this is all right. I’m at ease here. Oy, woman, you’re sitting on that rock like Persephone on her throne! Do you know who she was? Never mind.”
He stood right in front of Adila and seized both her shoulders in a hard, convulsive, painful grip. He looked fixedly at the painted face as if he wanted to strip away the mask with his eyes so as at last to see who was hiding behind it. His lips and beard trembled, heat flowed from his body. That was the moment when the Ebionite rags fell completely away and he was revealed from head to foot for what he was.
The girl tossed her head back in abandon, shook the black mass of her hair and lifted her breasts from her shift like two rounded golden goblets. She bored into Yehuda’s gaze with her black eyes and her teeth gleamed around her red mouth. Defiant, tempting, coldly lascivious was her smile.
“Which do you want first? Milk or honey?” she asked in a rough, slightly husky voice.
“Honey, honey . . .” whispered Yehuda eagerly.
Janos Kodolanyi: I AM 