Ever since that day I have realized that man’s soul is a terrible and dangerous coil spring. Without knowing it, we all carry a great explosive force wrapped in our flesh and lard. And what is worse, we do not want to know it, for then villainy, cowardice, and falsehood lose their justification; we can no longer hide behind man’s supposed impotence and wretched incompetence; we ourselves must bear the blame if we are villains, cowards, or liars, for although we have an all-powerful force inside, we dare not use it for fear it might destroy us. Rut we take the easy, comfortable way out, and allow it to vent its strength little by little until it too has degenerated to flesh and lard. How terrible not to know that we possess this force! If we did know, we would be proud of our souls. In all heaven and earth, nothing so closely resembles God as the soul of man.
25
BERLIN
FROM VIENNA I hopped to Berlin. Although Buddha had quenched many of my inner thirsts, he was unable to extinguish my thirst to view as many more parts of the earth and as many more seas as I possibly could. He had given me what he himself termed the “elephant eye”—the ability to see all things as if for the first time and greet them, to see all things as if for the last time and bid them farewell.
I kept telling myself that the world was a specter and that men were wraiths, dew-beings, ephemeral children of the dew. Buddha, the black sun, had risen and they were melting into nothingness. But pity took possession of my soul, pity and love. If only I could hold those specters at the edge of my vision for a moment longer and keep them from expiring! Every last bit of my heart, I felt, had not been wrapped in the yellow robe. A blood-red heartbeat still remained; pounding obstinately, it refused to let Buddha take full possession of me. Inside me a Cretan was lifting his hand in revolt and refusing to pay even a brass farthing of tribute to the peaceable conqueror.
It was at Berlin that I came to realize all this. As I close my eyes now to recall my sins in that disagreeable city (mortal sins for a follower of Buddha), my memory overflows with laughter, fiery words, wonderfully warm nights passed with no thought of sleep, blossoming chestnut and cherry trees, insatiable Jewish eyes, the acrid smell of female armpits—and I am unable to place things in their proper order.
I thumb through yellowed notebooks in an an effort to remember what came first, what next, what vows we swore, what caused the separation. . . . Great indeed is the strength of the letters of the alphabet, those twenty-six miniature soldiers that stand at the edge of the cliff and defend man’s heart at least for some little time, preventing it from falling and drowning in the black, bottomless eye of Buddha!
October 2. I’ve been wandering for three days now through Berlin’s endless, monotonous streets. The chestnut trees have lost their leaves; there is a frigid wind; my heart has turned to ice. Today I passed a great doorway with a sign written in large letters: “Congress of Educational Reform.” It was snowing and I was cold, so I went in. The hall was full of teachers, a great crowd of men and women. I searched for a place to sit. Suddenly I saw an orange blouse gleaming between gray and black suit jackets. Just as the insect is attracted by the color of the flower, so I, in the same way, moved toward the girl with the orange blouse. The seat next to her was vacant; I sat down. One of the teachers was gesticulating deliriously—he shouted himself hoarse, drank a little water, calmed down somewhat, then worked up steam again, all about how he was going to change the school curriculum and forge a new German generation which would disdain both life and death. Here was yet another savior; he was struggling to save the world by conquering it.
I turned to my neighbor. Her hair was blue-black, her immense eyes black and almond-shaped, her nose slightly hooked. Her skin was swarthy, the color of old amber, with a slight splotchiness in the face. Leaning over, I asked her, “Where do you think I’m from?”
“From the land of the sun,” she replied, blushing strongly.
“That’s right, from the land of the sun. I’m suffocating in here. Shall we go out and take a little walk?”
“Yes, let’s.”
Once out in the street, she jumped, laughed, and shouted like a child given a new toy.
“My name is Sarita, and I’m Jewish and I write poems.”
We went into a park. The yellow leaves massed on the ground craunched beneath our feet. I placed my palm on her hair; it was warm, and soft as silk. Without speaking, the girl stopped and craned her neck as though listening intently to something.
“Your hand gives off a force,” she said. “I feel like a jug being filled at the fountain.”
It was nearly noon. “Let’s go and eat,” I suggested. “A thick soup, nice and hot—to warm us.”
“This is a Jewish fast day. It’s a sin to eat. I’m just as hungry and cold as you are, but it’s a sin.”
“Let’s sin then, so that we can repent afterwards and be pardoned by terrible Jehovah, your god.”
She seemed annoyed to hear me refer to her god in this jocular way.
“And who is your god?”
This made me wince. Instantaneously I sensed that I too was sinning against my god. All this time I had forgotten that those eyes, that hair, that amber skin was nothing but a specter, and I did not blow, did not want to blow, to dispel it.
“Dionysus?” asked the girl with a laugh. “The great drunkard?”
“No, no, someone else, someone even more terrible than your Jehovah. . . . Don’t ask!”
I should have gotten up at that moment and left, but I pitied my body, pitied hers, and stayed.
“Recite one of your poems,” I said in order to divert my thoughts.
Her face beamed. Her voice became extremely caressive and embittered.
Exiles who have not realized yet
that exile is a home.
When we stride in new cities,
home walks next us like a sister.
Exiles who have not realized yet
that in our exiled hearts,
should a smile be granted us,
the Song of Songs begins.
Her eyes had filled with tears.
“Are you crying?” I asked, leaning close to her.
“No matter where you touch a Jew,” she answered, “you find a wound.”
October 3. If only man could really preserve the intoxication! If only Dionysus were an omnipotent god! But the intoxication rapidly disperses, the mind clears, and the warm, firm flesh becomes a specter once again. The next day my brain woke up. Eying me with disdain and severity, it shouted, Infidel, traitor, inconstant betrayer! I am ashamed to live and travel with you. Perhaps Buddha can forgive you, but I cannot. Do not step again into the orange-tinted snare.
Nevertheless, first thing in the morning I took the same route and returned to the Congress. I looked, but the orange color was nowhere to be seen. Though I wanted to rejoice, I could not. Once more I heard the big-sounding bombast. Many of the listeners were eating apples to calm their hunger; others were bent over taking notes, not missing a single word. Suddenly I had the presentiment of something like a warm breath behind me: a face ferreting me out and riveting its eyes upon me. Turning, I saw her at the far end of the hall. She was wearing a shabby shawl, dark olive in color, and had turned up her collar of napless fur because the room was cold. She smiled at me, her face beaming like a marble bust in sunlight.
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.
Mobilizing 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. Sud
denly 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.