Of all the people the earth has begotten, Buddha stands resplendently at the summit, an absolutely pure spirit. Without fear or sorrow, filled with mercy and good judgment, he extended his hand and, smiling gravely, opened the road to salvation. All beings follow impetuously behind him. Submitting freely to the ineluctable, they bound like kid goats going to suckle. Not only men, but all beings: men, beasts, trees. Unlike Christ, Buddha does not single out only humans; he pities everything, and saves everything.
In his heart he sensed the cosmos forming and vanishing—alone, without the aid of invisible powers. Ether condensed in his sun-baked skull and became a nebula, the nebula a star; the star, like a seed, formed a crust and put forth trees, animals, men, gods; then fire came into his skull and everything turned to smoke and perished.
I lived for many days and weeks plunged in this new adventure. What an abyss is the human heart! How the heartbeat breaks into palpitations and takes unforeseen routes! Was all my yearning and passion for immortality leading me then to absolute mortality? Or could it be that mortality and immortality were identical?
When Buddha rose from beneath the tree where for seven years he had struggled in his search for salvation, he went, saved now, and sat down cross-legged in the square of a large city. There, surrounded by lords, merchants, and warriors, he began to speak, preaching salvation. At first all these unbelievers ridiculed him, but gradually they felt their bowels emptying, felt themselves purged of desire, and little by little their festively white, red, and blue garments turned yellow, like Buddha’s robe. I, in the same way, felt my bowels emptying and my mind dressing itself in the yellow robe.
One night when I went out to take a short walk in the Prater, Vienna’s large park, a girl of the painted sisterhood stepped up to me beneath the trees. Frightened, I increased my pace, but she overtook me and caught hold of my arm. She exuded a heavy scent of violets; in the light I could make out her blue eyes, painted lips, and half-exposed breasts.
“Come with me . . .” she whispered, winking her eye.
“No! No!” I cried as though in danger.
She released my arm. “Why not?” she asked.
“I’m sorry but I don’t have time.”
“Are you crazy?” said the girl, glancing at me with sympathy. “What are you, a monk? No one is looking.”
Buddha is looking, I was about to reply, but I restrained myself. The girl’s eye, in the meantime, had caught sight of another solitary stroller, and she ran off to accost him. I took a deep breath. Feeling as though I had escaped a great danger, I returned posthaste to my room.
I had submerged myself in Buddha. My mind was a yellow heliotrope and Buddha the sun; I followed him as he rose, reached the zenith, and disappeared. “Water sleeps, but souls do not,” an old Rumelian once said to me. It seemed to me during those days, however, that my soul had entered a beatific sleep, submerged in Buddhist imperturbation. Just as when you dream and know you are dreaming, and all you see in your sleep, whether good or bad, arouses neither joy, sorrow, nor fear in you because you know that you will awake and all will be dispelled, so in this same way, feeling neither joy nor fright, unperturbed, I watched the phantasmagoria of the world pass before my eyes.
In order to prevent the vision from dispersing with great rapidity, in order to solidify perfect salvation with words so that my soul could feel it in a tangible way, I commenced to write a dialogue between Buddha and his beloved disciple Ananda.
• • •
Barbarians had descended from the mountains and blockaded the city. Buddha sat cross-legged beneath a blossoming tree, smiling. Ananda had leaned his head on Buddha’s knees and closed his eyes to keep the world’s phantasmagoria from leading his thoughts astray. Around them stood a multitude of auditors who longed to become disciples; they wanted to hear the words of salvation, but as soon as they learned that the barbarians were waging war, they became incensed.
“Get up, Master,” they cried. “Lead us to repel the barbarians. The secret of deliverance you can tell us afterwards.”
Buddha shook his head. “No, I refuse to come.”
“Are you tired?” shouted the others angrily. “Are you afraid?”
“I have completed the journey,” replied Buddha, his voice beyond fatigue and fear, beyond patriotism.
“Well then, let us go ourselves and defend the soil of our fathers!” cried all the rest, and they turned toward the city.
“Go with my benediction,” said Buddha, lifting his hand to bless them. “I went where you are going, went and returned. I shall be sitting here beneath this flowering tree, waiting for you also to return. Then only, when we all sit beneath the same flowering tree, each word that I speak and each word that you speak will have the same meaning for all of us. Now it is still much too soon. I say one thing and you understand something else. We do not speak the same language. So, pleasant journey! . . . Till we meet again!”
“I do not understand, Master,” said Sariputta. “Are you speaking to us in parables again?”
“You will understand upon your return, Sariputta. As I told you, now is much too soon. For years I have lived the life and suffering of mankind; for years I have filled out and ripened. Before this I never attained such complete freedom, my companions. And why did I attain this freedom? Because I made a great decision.”
“A great decision?” asked Ananda. Raising his head, he bowed to kiss the sole of Buddha’s holy foot. “What decision, Master?”
“I do not wish to sell my soul to God, to what all you others call God; I do not wish to sell my soul to the devil, to what all you others call the devil. I do not wish to sell myself to anyone. I am free! Happy the man who escapes the claws of God and the devil. He, and he alone, is saved.”
“Saved from what?” asked Sariputta, sweat dripping from his forehead. “Saved from what? Some words remain on your lips, Master. They are burning you.”
“No, Sariputta, they are not burning me, they are cooling me. Forgive me, but I do not know if you have the endurance, if you can hear them without becoming terror-stricken.”
“Master,” said Sariputta, “we are going off to war and may never return, may never see you again. Disclose these final words to us, your last. . . . Saved from what?
Slowly, heavily, like a body falling into the abyss, the words fell from Buddha’s compressed lips. “From salvation.”
“From salvation!” exclaimed Sariputta. “Saved from salvation? Master, I do not understand.”
“So much the better, Sariputta. If you understood, you would be frightened. Nevertheless, I want you to know, my companions, that this is my form of freedom. I have been saved from salvation!”
He fell silent. But now he was no longer able to restrain himself.
“I want you to know that every other form of freedom is slavery. If I were to be born again, I would fight for this great freedom, for salvation from salvation. . . . Enough, however. It is still too early for us to speak. We shall say it all when you return from war—if you return. Farewell!”
He took a deep breath. Seeing his disciples hesitate, he smiled. “Why do you stay?” he asked. “Warfare is still your duty. Off with you then, off to fight. Farewell!”
“Until we meet again, Master,” said Sariputta. . . . “Come, let’s go, and may God be with us!”
Ananda did not move. Buddha eyed him with satisfaction out of the corner of his eye.
“I am going to stay here with you, Master,” said the disciple, coloring strongly.
“From fear, Ananda, my beloved?”
“From love, Master.”
“Love is no longer enough, my faithful companion.”
“I know that, Master. As you spoke, I saw flames licking your mouth.”
“They were not flames, Ananda, they were my words. Do you understand those superhuman words, my young, faithful friend?”
“I think I do. That is why I remained with you.”
“What do you understand?”
; “Whoever says salvation exists is a slave, because he keeps weighing each of his words and deeds at every moment. ‘Will I be saved or damned?’ he tremblingly asks. ‘Will I go to heaven or to hell?’ . . . How can a soul that hopes be free? Whoever hopes is afraid both of this life and the life to come; he hangs indecisively in the air and waits for luck or God’s mercy.”
Buddha placed his palm on Ananda’s black hair.
“Stay,” he said.
They remained silent for some time beneath the flowering tree, Buddha slowly, compassionately caressing the beloved disciple’s hair.
“Salvation means deliverance from all saviors. This is the supreme freedom, the highest, where a man breathes only with difficulty. Do you have the endurance?”
Ananda had bowed his head. He did not speak.
“In other words, now you understand who is the perfect Savior . . .”
He fell silent for a moment, but then, twisting between his fingers a blossom which had fallen from the tree: “It is the Savior who shall deliver mankind from salvation.”
• • •
With the twenty-six letters of the alphabet (the only stones and concrete I have) I paved the new road leading to salvation. Now I knew, and knowing, I regarded the world tranquilly, without fear, because now it could no longer deceive me. Leaning out of my window, I looked at the men, women, and cars, at the stores loaded with meat, groceries, drinks, fruit, books—and smiled. All these were just so many variegated clouds; a gentle breeze would blow and they would be dispelled. The Tempter’s power had begotten them; now human thirst and hunger were holding on to them for an hour or two, as long as possible before the breeze blew and scattered them.
Going outside to the street, I mingled with a wave of people all running somewhere in a great hurry. I ran with them; I no longer had anything to fear. They are wraiths, I reflected, a mist composed of dewdrops. Why be afraid of them? Why not go along and see what they’re doing? Reaching a movie theater with red, blue, and green lights, we went inside and enthroned ourselves in velvet-cushioned seats. At the far end was a bright screen over which anxious shadows were hurriedly passing. What were they doing? Kissing, killing, being killed. Next to me sat a girl. Her breath smelled of cinnamon. I felt her bosom heave as she respired. From time to time her knee touched mine. I shuddered, but did not draw away. She turned and glanced at me for an instant, and in the half-darkness of the auditorium I thought I saw her smile.
Soon I had enough of watching these shadows, and I got up to leave. The girl got up also. At the exit she turned again and smiled at me. We struck up a conversation. The moon shining above us, we headed toward the park and sat down on a little bench. It was summer; the night was sweet as honey, the lilacs fragrant. Couples kept passing; others were embracing, stretched out on the grass. A nightingale hidden deep in the lilacs began to sing above our heads, and my heart stood still. It was not a bird; it must have been some cunning goblin. I had heard this same voice once before, I believe—when climbing Psiloríti—and I knew what it was saying. Extending my hand, I rested it on the girl’s hair.
“What’s your name?” I asked her.
“Frieda,” she replied, laughing. “Why ask? My name is ‘Woman.’”
At that point something terrible escaped my lips. The words I spoke were not my own; they must have belonged to one of my ancestors—not my father, who despised women, but someone else. The moment I uttered them, I felt overcome by terror. But it was too late.
“Frieda, will you spend the night with me?”
The girl calmly replied, “Not tonight. I can’t. Tomorrow.”
Feeling relieved, I rose in great haste. We parted. I walked hurriedly back to my room.
And then something incredible happened, something which makes me shudder even now when I recall it. Man’s soul is truly indestructible, truly august and noble, but pressed to its bosom it carries a body which grows daily more putrescent. While on my way back home, I heard the blood mounting to my head. My soul had become enraged. Sensing that my body was about to fall into sin, it had bounded to its feet, full of scorn and anger, and refused to grant permission. The blood continued to flow upward and mass in my face, until little by little I became aware that my lips, cheeks, and forehead were swelling. My eyes soon grew so small that nothing remained but two slits, and it was only with difficulty that I managed to see anything at all.
Constantly stumbling, I increased my pace and ran anxiously homeward in order to look in the mirror and see what state I was in.
When I finally arrived and turned on the light and looked, I emitted a cry of terror. My entire face was swollen and horribly disfigured; my eyes were barely visible between two overflowing masses of florid flesh, and my mouth had become an oblong slot incapable of opening. Suddenly I remembered the girl Frieda. Being in such a disgusting state, how could I see her the next day? I wrote out a telegram: “Can’t come tomorrow, will come the day after,” and fell onto my bed in despair. What disease can this be? I asked myself. Was it leprosy? As a child in Crete I often saw lepers with their swollen, blood-red, constantly desquamating faces, and now I recalled what horror they had roused in me—so much that one day I had said, “If I were king, I would take all the lepers, hang stones around their necks, and heave them into the sea.” Was it possible that the Invisible (an Invisible) had remembered my inhuman words and sent me this horrible disease as a punishment?
That night I did not get a moment’s sleep. I was anxious for dawn to come, for I said to myself that perhaps the trouble would pass by morning, and I continually investigated my face to see if the swelling had begun to subside. At daybreak I jumped out of bed and ran to the mirror. An appalling mask of flesh was glued to my face; the skin had commenced to burst open and exude a yellowish-white liquid. I was not a man, I was a demon.
I called for the chambermaid in order to give her the telegram. She screamed and hid her face behind her palms the moment she opened the door and saw me. Not daring to come close, she snatched the telegram and left. A day went by, two, three; a week, two weeks. Every day, afraid that the girl might come to my room and see me, I dispatched the same telegram: “Can’t come today, will come tomorrow.” I felt not the slightest pain, but I could not open my mouth to eat; my only nourishment was milk and lemonade, which I sucked in through a straw. Finally I could stand it no longer. I had read several psychoanalytical works by the famous disciple of Freud, Wilhelm Stekel, and I went to seek him out. My psyche had inflicted this disease on me, though I did not know why. This much I divined: my psyche was to blame.
The learned professor began to hear my confession. I related my life history: how I’d been searching for a path of salvation ever since my adolescence; how I followed Christ for many years, but lately had found His religion too unsophisticated, too optimistic, and had left Him to follow the path of Buddha. . . .
The professor smiled.
“To search in order to find the world’s beginning and end is a disease,” he said to me. “The normal person lives, struggles, experiences joy and sorrow, gets married, has children, and does not waste his time in asking whence, whither, and why. But you did not finish your story. You are still hiding something from me. Confess everything.”
I related how I met Frieda, and said we had arranged a tryst.
The professor burst into shrill, sarcastic laughter. I glanced at him with irritation. I had already begun to hate this man, because he was examining my secrets beneath his indiscreet magnifying glass, and struggling to force open all the barred and padlocked doors inside me.
“Enough! Enough!” he said, beginning to titter again in his sarcastic way. “This mask will remain glued to your face as long as you stay in Vienna. The disease you have is called the ascetics’ disease. It is extremely rare in our times, because what body, today, obeys its soul? Have you ever read the saints’ legends? Do you remember the ascetic who left the Theban desert and ran toward the nearest city because the demon of fornication had suddenly mounted h
im, and he felt compelled to sleep with a woman? He ran and ran, but just as he was about to pass through the city gates, he looked down and saw with terror that leprosy was spreading over his body. It was not leprosy, however; it was this disease, the same one you have. With such a revolting face, how could he present himself before a woman? What woman would find it possible to touch him? So he ran back to his hermitage in the desert and gave thanks to God for having delivered him from sin, whereupon God, according to the legend, forgave him and scraped the leprosy off his body. . . . Do you understand now? Plunged as it is in the Buddhist Weltanschauung, your soul—or rather what for you goes by the name of soul—believes that sleeping with a woman is a mortal sin. For that reason it refuses to permit its body to commit this sin. Such souls, souls capable of imposing themselves to so great a degree on the flesh, are rare in our age. In my entire scientific career I have encountered only one other such case, that of an extremely upright, extremely pious Viennese lady. She loved her husband very much, but he was away at the front, and she chanced to meet a young man and fall in love with him. One night she was ready to surrender herself, but suddenly her soul rose up in revolt, opposing her. Her face became repulsively swollen, just as yours is now. In desperation she sought me out. I reassured her. ‘You’ll be cured when your husband comes back from the war,’ I told her, and indeed, as soon as her husband returned, in other words as soon as the danger of sin was past, her face regained its original beauty. Your case is the same. You will be cured as soon as you depart from Vienna and leave Frieda behind you.”
I did not believe it. Scientific fairy tales, I said to myself, leaving in a state of stubborn vexation. I’ll stay in Vienna, I’ll stay and get better. . . . I remained for another month, but the mask did not melt away. I continued to send the daily telegram to Frieda: “Can’t come today, will come tomorrow.” This tomorrow never arrived, however. One morning, having grown weary of the whole business, I got out of bed with the resolute determination to leave. I took my valise, descended the stairs, emerged into the street, and headed for the station. It was early morning and a cool breeze was blowing. Working-class men and women were racing to their jobs in merry flocks, still munching mouthfuls of bread. The sun had not come down into the streets yet. Several windows were being opened; the city was awakening. I walked with weightless steps, in a fine mood; I was awakening just like the city. I felt my face losing its burden as I proceeded. My eyes were being freed, they could open now. The swelling in my lips began to subside, and I started whistling like a child. The cool breeze passed over my face like a compassionate hand, like a caress. When I finally reached the station and took out my pocket mirror to look at myself, what joy, what good fortune! The swelling in my face had entirely disappeared; my former features—nose, mouth, cheeks—had returned. The demon had fled; once more I was a human being.