Suddenly, when Christ’s broiling throat finally became unbearably parched and He cried out, “I thirst!” a youngish, rather plump woman jumped up in a frenzy and shouted, “O my son!” How disturbed I felt at hearing the woman’s deep, maternal cry, at hearing her call God himself her son!
We had left the Aegean behind us now and were approaching the Near East. Africa lay invisible on our right, Cyprus stood to our left on the horizon. The fiery sea was flashing. Two butterflies flew up above the rigging. A small, famished bird had been following us; it darted forward and ate one of them. When a pale and delicate girl began to scream in protest, someone said, “Forget about it; that’s the way it should be. What do you think God is—some delicate lady?”
We were drawing near the sun-baked land where once upon a time a flame had bounded out of a poor cottage in Nazareth, a flame which burned and renewed man’s heart. Life today is again in a state of decomposition, just as it was two thousand years ago, but the problems currently shattering the equilibrium between mind and heart are more intricate, the solutions more difficult and bloody. Then, a simple message of utmost sweetness was found, and salvation rose to the earth’s surface like the season of spring. No simpler, sweeter message exists. Perhaps this message is capable of saving us even now—who can tell? That was why we were going to Jerusalem: to listen once more to the Son of Mary.
It was nighttime. I stretched out on the deck to go to sleep, but a violent debate had begun to rage in the hold below, and I lent an ear. Someone, a young man, judging from the quality of his voice, was passionately condemning the dishonesty and injustice of present-day economic and social life. The masses went hungry while the great and powerful piled up fortunes. Women sold themselves, priests did not believe, both heaven and the infernal pit were here on earth. The afterlife did not exist; here was where we had to find justice and happiness. . . . Cries rang out: “Yes, yes, you’re right!” “Fire and the axe!” Only one person attempted to object. I recognized him by his chanting inflection as the deacon traveling with us. But his voice was drowned in shouts and laughter.
Springing off my pillow, I listened greedily. This ship’s hold seemed like a new catacomb in which slaves had assembled once more—today’s slaves—to conspire to blow the world up all over again. It was frightening. The purpose of our trip was to worship the sweet, familiar face of God—so gentle, so tortured, so filled with hopes for life everlasting. The little old women were bringing Him consecrated bread, silver ex-votos, candles, tears, and prayers. High up in first class, the carefree faithless talked politics or slept, while here below, deep down in the hold, we were carrying as a terrifying gift the seed of a new, dangerous, and as yet unformed cosmogony.
A beloved and sacrosanct world was in danger; another, a harsh world all mud and flame, was rising full of life from the soil and man’s heart. Hidden deep down in the hold, it straddled every boat, and traveled.
The next morning we began to see the Promised Land—a distant line on the horizon at first, invisible in the milky haze; then the low mountains of Judea, gray in the beginning, afterwards light blue, finally vanishing, drowned in the powerful light of day. The little old ladies rose. Gathering together their bundles and tying their black wimples over their heads, they began to cross themselves and weep.
Sand, genial orchards, swarthy, greasy women, prickly pears, date trees; the climb to the holy city in panting buses. Suddenly every heart beat violently. Walls, battlements, fortified gates; odor of dung, spices, and rotted fruit. White jelabs, fierce guttural voices. The shades of all the murdered prophets rose from the soil; the stones came to life and cried out, all covered with blood.
Jerusalem!
I neither desire to recall that Holy Week, nor dare. During those seven days the whole of man’s tragic adventure finally became manifest—the hope and love, the betrayal and sacrifice, the cry of “My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Not Christ but man—every just and pure man—was being betrayed, scourged, and crucified, without God offering His hand to help. Indeed, had woman’s warm heart not been present, God would have left man to lie within the tomb forever. Our salvation hangs upon a thread, upon a cry of love.
One night led to the next, bringing me finally to the holy dawn of Easter Day. The Temple of the Resurrection was buzzing like an immense hive. It smelled of beeswax and human perspiration—the sweaty white, brown, and black armpits of men and women who had slept that night beneath the temple vaults, awaiting the universe-generating moment when the holy light would spring from Christ’s Sepulcher. Everywhere a deep acid stench of wax and rancid oil. Underneath the holy icons coffee boiled in little pots and mothers bared their breasts to nurse their infants. The Negresses must have anointed their hair with tallow; it had melted, making them smell like sheep. Their menfolk exuded the insupportable fetor of billy goats.
Wave after wave of pilgrims arrived, filling the temple to overflowing. Some climbed the columns, others straddled the stalls. Still others drooped over the women’s gallery, their excited, transfixed eyes riveted to the small tabernacle in the center of the church, from which the holy light would spring at any moment. Abyssinians and Bedouins, Negroes with fezzes, with multicolored jelabs and flaming rheumy eyes—all the races of mankind—shouting, laughing, sighing. A young man fainted, was lifted up and deposited stiff as a board in the courtyard; a slender elderly Maronite priest clothed in a snow-white soutane and red sash fell to the paving stones foaming at the mouth.
Suddenly the multitude grew silent. The air filled with burning eyes. The Patriarch had appeared, dressed all in gold. Alone, without speaking, he lowered his head and stepped beneath the holy tabernacle at the center of the church. Mothers lifted their children to their shoulders so that they could see; the fellahs stood with hanging jaws. Each second fell like a thick drop upon our heads, the air tautened until it rasped like a drumhead, and behold! a gleam leaped from the sacred canopy, and the Patriarch emerged with a thick bundle of burning white candles in his hand. In a flash the temple was flooded with flames from base to top. All the onlookers, holding their white candles, had dashed toward the Patriarch to receive the light. They put their hands into the flame and rubbed their faces and breasts. The women were shrieking; the men began to dance. Howling, everyone poured out toward the door to leave.
The temple remained empty. The fearful din, the frenzied crowd, the multicolored tatters—all seemed like some exotic dream. Looking down at the floor, however, I ascertained that this entire vision had been true, for below me on the paving stones I saw the certain remains of ecstasy: orange peels, olive pits, and broken bottles.
I went out to the courtyard to breathe fresh air. I longed to go away, to take to the desolate, denuded mountains opposite me and walk and walk, without seeing anything but sun, moon, and stones. For the entire time that mass intoxication raged around me and the faithful rushed forward in a transport, calling Christ-commanding Him—to emerge from the tomb, I had restrained myself and refused to allow my heart to become drunk. The soul, like the body, has its modesty; it refuses to disrobe in public. But as soon as I was alone, I cried to myself, Away, away! To the wilderness! There God blows like a scorching wind; I shall undress and have Him burn me.
“Stay, Madam Soul,” said God, “do not leave.” “What do you want of me, Lord?” “I want you to undress, Madam Soul.” “Lord, how can you ask such a thing of me? I’m ashamed.” “Madam Soul, nothing must stand between us, not even the most delicate of veils. Therefore, madam, you must undress.” “Here I am, Lord. I have undressed. Take me!”
Singing to myself these immortal words of a soul in love with God, I set out along the road to the Dead Sea. I longed to see the pit opened by the two sinful cities that were engulfed. The gray, yellow, and rose-red crags steamed as a fierce, gelatinous sun dripped upon them. Every so often a breath of scorching wind filled my mouth and soul with sand. The stones were on fire. Not a flower, not a drop of water, not a single songbird to emit a sound to
welcome the passer-by or jeer him away. Suspended above me was God, only God—like a sword.
This God is not Christ, I thought to myself with a shudder. He is not the kind, sweetly speaking son of Mary. He is Jehovah, the terrifying man-eater. I sought the one and found the other. How can I escape at this point from the dark, impenetrable precincts of His silence?
The more the desert swallowed me up, the more my head caught fire. I began to call on God to appear and speak to me. Had He not created me a man? Was not man the animal that asked questions? Well, I was questioning; He ought to reply. I addressed Him softly in the scorching wind. “Lord,” I confessed, “I am passing through a difficult moment. What should I do? Place a live coal in my mouth, a word, the simple word which brings salvation. This is why I have descended into this deep well, this well blinded by excessive light—to talk with You. Reveal Yourself!”
I waited and waited. No answer.
Ever since my childhood years when I read the lives of the saints in our family courtyard, I had been burning with the desire to set foot on this soil I was now treading, burning with the desire to tread the soil and stones trodden by Christ, and to hear His voice. I had always had something to say to Him (and still have). He would take pity on me, would He not? Yes, He would answer! As the world rolls along, it changes its questions, anguishes, and devils. Christ might therefore have some new word to cure the new wounds, to give a new and more virile face to love.
Talking to myself in this way, I proceeded, inhaling the same desert air composed of flames and sand that the prophets had inhaled and received into their bowels. As I was arriving at the depths of the funnel, suddenly the Dead Sea gleamed before me, motionless and ashen, like molten lead, filled with slimy, jellied, tarry water; and flowing from it toward Palestine between reeds and tamarisk, was the blue-green River Jordan. Groups of men in long shirts were crossing themselves. A priest stood chanting on the riverbank while they plunged into the sanctified water and became hadjis.
A tavern had been set up along the bank beneath a roof of woven reeds. While an antique phonograph raucously mewed Arab amanédhes, the rotund tavern-keeper, whose jelab was covered everywhere with grease stains, fried lamb livers and accompanied the phonograph in a bellowing voice.
Quickening my pace, I skirted the venomous shore line of the Dead Sea and re-entered the desert, my excited, startled eyes pinned on the lifeless waters as though toiling to discern the twin cities submerged at their bottom. And as I looked, a yellow flash tore across my mind. I saw—saw that some all-powerful foot had come along here, angrily trampling the two cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and submerging them. I was heart-stricken. One day our own Sodom and Gomorrah would be trampled by some all-powerful foot, and this world which laughed, reveled, and forgot God would be transformed, in its turn, into a Dead Sea. At the end of every period God’s foot comes along in this way and tramples the cities of the overindulged belly, the overdeveloped mind.
I felt afraid. (Sometimes it seems to me that this world is another Sodom and Gomorrah just before God’s passage above it. I think the terrible foot can already be heard approaching.)
I halted on a low sand dune and gazed for a long time at the accursed water struggling to haul those charming, sinful cities up out of the tarry bowels. I wanted them to shine again for a brief instant in the sunlight, just long enough for me to catch a glimpse of them. Then I would bat my eyelashes once more, and they would vanish.
Sodom and Gomorrah reclined along the riverbank like two whores kissing each other. Men copulated with other men, women with other women, men with mares, women with bulls. They ate and overate from the Tree of Life; they ate and overate from the Tree of Knowledge. Smashing their sacred statues, they saw that they were nothing but wood and stone; smashing their ideas, they saw that they were filled with air. Coming very, very close to God, they said, “This God is not the father of Fear, he is the son of Fear,” and they lost their fear. On the four gates to the city they wrote in large yellow letters, THERE IS NO GOD HERE. What does There is no God mean? It means there is no bridle on our instincts, no reward for good or punishment for evil, no virtue, shame, or justice—that we are wolves and she-wolves in heat.
God grew angry and called Abraham.
“Abraham!”
“Command me, Lord.”
“Abraham, take your sheep, camels, and dogs, your servant men and women, your wife, your son—and leave! Leave. I have come to a decision.”
“On your lips, Lord, ‘I have come to a decision’ means ‘I shall kill!’”
“Their minds have grown overinsolent, their hearts overjubilant, their bellies overinflated—I’m sick of them! They build houses out of stone and iron as though they were immortal. They equip themselves with furnaces, make fires, and melt down metals. I laid the desert out as a leprosy over the face of the earth because that’s the way I wanted it! And those people down there in Sodom and Gomorrah irrigate the desert, manure it, transform it into a garden. The immortal elements of water, iron, stone, and fire are nothing more now than their slaves. No, I’ve had enough of them! They ate of the Tree of Knowledge, picked the apples, and they shall die!”
“All of them, Lord?”
“All. Am I not omnipotent?”
“No, Lord, you are not omnipotent, because you are just. You cannot do anything unjust, dishonest, or absurd.”
“What can any of you know about just and unjust, honest and dishonest, logical and absurd, you worms made of dust, nourished on dust, and destined to return to dust? My designs are unfathomable; if you could meet them face to face, you would be terror-stricken.”
“You are lord of heaven and earth; you, hold life and death side by side in the same palm and you choose. I am a worm, mere dust and water, but you breathed upon me, and the dust and water produced a soul. Thus I shall speak! There are thousands of people in Sodom and Gomorrah who eat, drink, primp, laugh, and mock; there are thousands of minds down there that puff themselves up like serpents and sling their venom with a hiss toward heaven. But if forty righteous souls are to be found among them, Lord, will you burn them?”
“Names! I want names! Who are these forty?”
“And what if there are twenty, twenty righteous souls, Lord?”
“I want names! I am spreading my fingers to count.”
“And what if there are ten, ten righteous souls, Lord? What if there are five?”
“Abraham, shut your impudent mouth!”
“Have pity, Lord! You are not only just, you are good. Woe betide if you were only omnipotent; woe betide if you were only just. We would all be lost. But you are good, Lord, and that is why men are still able to stand in the air.”
“Do not kneel and stretch out your arms to clasp my knees. I have no knees! Do not start wailing in order to touch my heart. I have no heart! I am rigid, a solid piece of black granite; no hand can make an impression on me. I have arrived at my decision: I shall burn Sodom and Gomorrah!”
“Do not rush, Lord. Why rush when it’s a question of killing. Wait! I found one!”
“Found what as you scratched in the soil, you worm?”
“A righteous soul.”
“Who?”
“My brother Haran’s son. Lot.”
As I stood motionless on the sand dune, I felt my temples grating. Inside me I heard God’s voice wrestling with the voice of man. For a moment it seemed that the air congealed and Lot stood before me—fierce and barefooted, with a flowing beard, an upright flame on his forehead. Not, however, the Lot of the Old Testament, the slave. This was a Lot all my own, a rebel who would refuse to obey God’s command to flee and save himself. Instead, he would pity the charming, sinful cities and of his own free will throw himself into the fire to burn and perish with them.
“Tell him I’m not leaving!” he cried to Abraham. “I am Sodom and Gomorrah—tell him that—and I’m not leaving. Doesn’t he say I am free? Doesn’t he say (and boast about it no less) that he created me free? Well then, I do as I pl
ease. I’m not leaving!”
“I wash my hands of it, rebel. Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, you old well of virtue; goodbye, lamb of God! And say to your boss, ‘Greetings from old Lot.’ Tell him something else too: that he isn’t just, isn’t good. He is omnipotent. Only omnipotent, nothing else!”
The sun had gone down by now. The light became a little more gentle, and my temples grew calm. Feeling as though I had just emerged from a desperate struggle, I drew a breath and glanced behind me. How had such a rebel risen from my bowels? It was terrifying. Where in my depths, behind God, had this savage, unsubduable soul been hiding? I had been with Abraham, the pious, obedient patriarch. How was it that now I had forsaken him, trampled on Holy Scripture, created a Lot such as this, and become one with him?
The impudent demon had been huddled deep down within me, waiting for my head to become unhinged for an instant and my mind to abandon the keys, so that it could open the trap door, leap out into the light, and begin straightway to act saucily toward God, its eternal adversary.
I had found it necessary to purge my bowels and expel the demons inside me—wolves, monkeys, women; minor virtues, minor joys, successes—so that I could remain simply an upright flame directed toward heaven. Now that I was a man, what was I doing but enacting what I had so ardently desired as a child in the courtyard of our family home! A person is born only once; I would never have another chance!
Night had already fallen when I arrived back in Jerusalem. The stars seemed like mouthfuls of fire suspended over the heads of mankind, but no one in Jerusalem’s hallowed streets lifted his eyes to see them and perish with fright. The great fear was conquered by everyday passions, minor concerns, food, the pocketbook, and women. Thus the people were able to forget, still, and keep on living.
As I tossed and turned on my hard mattress, I thought to myself, The time has come for me to make a decision, to bring to completion what I divined as a child when the milk of God was still upon my lips.