Pictor's Metamorphoses (9 page)

Tired and confused, the prophet made his way through the swarming multitude; he crossed the bridge, went through the gate, and reached open ground, where the last few followers left him. Sorrowfully he entered the forest and with heavy thoughts he sought out that spot where at other times he sometimes had felt the nearness of God. Praying, but without hope, he went astray, oppressed by the misery of thousands. Without desiring it, he, a herdsman and friend of children, had become a spiritual adviser for the many; he had helped many and saved many, and now all this had been to no avail, and he was made to see that evil was inextinguishable and triumphant on earth.

On the fourth day, he entered the town slowly, bent over; his face had grown old, his hair had turned white. The people waited for him in silence, and many of them knelt down as he passed by.

He ended his life with a lie, which, nonetheless, was the truth.

“Have you seen God? And what has He told you?” the people asked.

And he opened his eyes and answered them: “This is what He told me: ‘Get you hence and die for your town, as I have died for the world.'”

For a while fear and disappointment held the multitude captive. Then an old man jumped to his feet, cursing, and spit in the prophet's face. And so Hannes met his end, and in silence succumbed to the wrath of the people.

The Merman

FROM AN OLD CHRONICLE

D
ESPITE THE SPREAD
of humanism in Italy in the early years of the fifteenth century, many more things which defy rational explanation came to pass between Milan and Naples in those day than in ours; in any case, the chroniclers of that time, despite their occasional sophistication, were constantly opening their eyes wide in astonishment and telling, with candor befitting their vocation, of wholly curious matters. One such incident from that time, supported by the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, is the following.

A seaside city, to be sure not very large, but very old, widely celebrated, and inhabited by any number of men who were a credit to the arts and sciences, erected a lovely church on the site where long before had stood a temple to Neptune. The building was completed and consecrated, and was admired, with pride and joy, by all who saw it—all, that is, but the jealous inhabitants of the neighboring town.

A short time after the bishop had consecrated the church, a hideous storm blew up and raged with unprecedented fierceness for four days and nights. Several fishing barques went down with all hands; a sailing ship carrying precious cargo sank not far from the coast; and the enormously heavy, gold-plated cross was torn from the steeple of the newly built church. It plummeted through the roof of the church and hung, ruined and bent out of shape, in the rafters. To many, its present form appeared to be that of a trident, and they concluded therefore that this was an act of vengeance by the outraged God of the Sea. Others took pains to demonstrate the untenability of this assertion; it became a matter of heated debate, and soon the whole city was up in arms about it. In the council chamber, the great historian Marcus Salestris delivered a treatise on the nature and history of the divinity of the sea god, a thorough piece of work, full of citations of and allusions to the works of the ancients and of the church fathers, which culminated in the conviction that the sea gods of former times had been either eradicated or else plunged into the unknown and desolate ocean on the other side of the continent.

The famous orator Caesarius answered him in a public address. While acknowledging Salestris's erudition and merits, he firmly maintained the opposing point of view; and to many people his view was exceedingly plausible, for he enumerated many instances—both from the chronicles and from the logbooks of sailors of more recent times—of encounters between human beings and heathen sea creatures.

In the meantime, the terrible storm had abated, and when the sea had properly calmed down, fishermen and other people whose livelihood depended on it could again ply their trades on the shore.

Then one morning fishwives came running into the city; screaming aloud, they brought the news: a naked man, half covered with seaweed, had been washed ashore. They had supposed it was the corpse of a man who had died in the storm, and soon a large band of people—some ready to help, others merely curious—accompanied them to the shore. They brought along poles, nets, and ropes; some of them set their boats on the water; and thus they neared the body, which, not far from the beach, appeared to be caught in creeping seaweed and was bobbing up and down in time with the breakers which engulfed it. Women wailed and prayed; youths and children looked with horror upon the pale, shimmering body, now exposed to the breast, now showing only a hand over the water.

Because of the uncertainty of the sea floor and the numerous shoals, it was found advisable to haul in the body by means of a dragnet attached to three boats. Experienced men set out and accomplished their task.

But it was with horror that the throng of onlookers cried out as they saw the body suddenly and violently move in the net that surrounded it. Thrashing its arms, it tore at the net, and unexpectedly let out such a savage and hideous roar that every heart froze in terror. At the same time, he hurled himself, as if in spasm, high up into the air, and now all could see that the creature was equipped with a powerful fish tail in place of legs.

“A monster! A merman! A sea monster!” they cried out in confusion, and not a few ran away. But the men in the boats, though terrified, stood their ground and with superior strength pulled the inextricably entangled creature onto dry land. There they tied up the netted creature with heavy ropes, threw him into a two-wheeled cart, and conveyed him, amid the monstrous hue and cry of the people, into the city.

Meantime, those who had already fled had brought the news to every street and lane, and just as the men hurried the cart into the marketplace, a huge throng of people streamed in from all directions.

“Kill him!” “Draw and quarter him!” hundreds of voices cried out. Yet no one dared approach the prisoner, over whom his captors stood guard.

Men of name and esteem turned out in good numbers, along with the mayor, and there was much heated discussion among them. The historian Salestris and the orator Caesarius, having in mind closer observation, were the first to approach the monster, who lay in the wagon. No matter how widely their opinions diverged, they were, nevertheless, of one mind in this matter: every attempt must be made to keep the stranger alive. And they prevailed against the wishes of the multitude, enabling the men who had delivered the prisoner to throw him—bound as he was—into the fountain in the marketplace, and he immediately sank beneath the water's surface.

The fountain was garrisoned with sentries, and the overwrought townspeople prowled around the square for some time. Meanwhile, in the Town Hall, in consultation with the learned men, deliberations went on as to what further steps were to be taken. Salestris and Caesarius were granted permission and enjoined to study the triton as closely as they could; and, if at all possible, they were to speak with him.

They went to the fountain, where the guards shielded them from the thronging crowd of the curious. The merman lay at the bottom of the deep stone basin, and only after several hours did they succeed in luring him to the surface with bread and fish. Finally he emerged, and it was evident that in the interim he had managed to extricate himself from the net and lines. The two scholars made the sign of the cross, which provoked laughter from the merman. Then, first the one, then the other, spoke to him, in Italian and in Latin. But he did not understand them, though he seemed to listen intently and to take pains to respond partly through gesture, partly through the incomprehensible sounds of a foreign tongue.

A second session in the Town Hall was inconclusive. Caesarius expressed his conviction that it had to be possible to communicate with the stranger in some language or other. And so a southern sailor was found, one who lived in town as the manager of a shipping office, and who was fluent in the language of the Saracens. He, too, spoke to the monster and was not understood. But it struck him as plausible that the monster was speaking Greek, since the sounds the creature made were very like those of the Greek language, which, to be sure, he himself did not understand, but which he had sometimes heard spoken at sea.

It was now a matter of finding someone who knew Greek. And yet there was no one at hand, for at that time knowledge of the Greek language was not at all widespread. Still, the historian Salestris knew that one Doctor Charikles, a resident of the neighboring town, had in his possession books written in Greek and was given to boasting of his Greek studies. But no one wanted to fetch Charikles and thereby bestow favor on the detested neighboring town.

Late in the evening, however, in a final session of the town council, it was deemed proper to bring in the foreign doctor and scholar in secret; and Caesarius accepted the task, albeit reluctantly. Early the next morning he mounted his horse and rode to the town, which lay at no great distance; he called on Charikles, flattered him greatly, and bade him, finally, to accompany him without causing a sensation. Charikles replied that he had not the slightest intention of rendering a service to the enemy of his own town; nonetheless, in the interests of science, and for a suitable reward, he would, for all that, accompany Caesarius.

And so, in the late afternoon, the noblemen, the scholars, and the doctor Charikles stood by the edge of the fountain basin. The sea monster emerged and, using both arms, set himself on the stone breastwork. Charikles spoke to him in Latin and in Italian, but with no result. Then he began to speak Greek, and scarcely had he uttered a few sentences when the monster, too, started making unfamiliar sounds.

“Good,” said the doctor to the bystanders. “He is answering me.”

“But it seems to me,” Salestris opined, “that the monster is not speaking the same language as you, sir.”

“You have a keen ear,” rejoined the foreigner, smiling. “The triton speaks Greek all right, but it is an ancient Ionian dialect, the same one in which the Homeric songs are composed.”

He continued to speak to the monster, until the latter, tired of the effort, dived into the water and disappeared. Thereupon Charikles read his conversation into the protocol in the Town Hall. According to this testimony, the merman had reported that he was an emissary of the god Poseidon. The god was angry that a temple to a strange god had been erected on the site of his former temple; for that reason he had sent the storm, destroyed fishermen, sailors, and their goods, and damaged the steeple and roof of the new temple. Should the inhabitants of the town be so bold as to repair the damages, his vengeance would know no bounds. Furthermore, he demanded as propitiation that his likeness be set on the pillar of the fountain in the marketplace.

Charikles received a fitting reward and was accompanied halfway back to his town by two noblemen. That night the sea monster three times let out a hideous cry and was gone without a trace the next morning. Shortly thereafter, a bronze likeness of Neptune was placed over the fountain, and the hole in the roof of the new church went unrepaired, letting in both sunshine and rain. This contributed to the rapid deterioration of the building; that church is not the one standing today, for in the seventeenth century it was replaced by another, in the baroque style.

The Enamored Youth

A LEGEND

T
HIS NARRATIVE REFERS
to events which took place in the days of Saint Hilarion. In the town where he was born, near Gaza, there lived a simple, pious couple whom the Lord had blessed with a daughter of intelligence and great beauty. Reared by her parents in the ways of goodness, the sensitive girl, to everyone's delight, grew in humility and piety, and was, in all her discreet charm, as lovely to behold as an angel of God. Her dark, shining hair played about her white forehead; long, velvety-black lashes shaded her modestly lowered eyes; she walked on tiny, delicate feet, slender and light as the gazelles under the palm trees. She would not even look at men, for in her fourteenth year of age she had taken deathly ill, and she had vowed—should He save her—to take none but God as husband, and God had accepted her offering.

A youth who lived in the same town fell in love with this picture of undefiled maiden chastity. He, too, was handsome and comely, the son of well-to-do parents, who had bred and raised him with all due care. But once he had fallen in love with the lovely young woman, he would do nothing but seek out every opportunity to see her; and when he did, he would stand enraptured before the ever so lovely child, gazing at her with ardent yearning in his eyes. When a day would pass without his seeing her face, he would mope around pale and dejected, eat nothing, and pass many an hour in sighs and lamentations.

Having had a good, Christian upbringing, the youth was possessed of a gentle and pious temperament, but now this violent infatuation reigned over his heart and soul. He was no longer able to pray, and instead of meditating on the holy things, he thought only of the maiden's long, black hair, her tranquil, beautiful eyes, the color and contours of her cheeks and lips, her slender, shining neck, and her tiny agile feet. But he was reluctant to let her know of his great love and eager desire; for he knew only too well that she meant to take no earthly husband, bearing no love within her but to God and to her parents.

Languishing with lovesickness, he finally wrote her a long, imploring letter in which he declared his ardent love; with all his heart he begged her to accept him, and, in days to come, to live with him in holy matrimony, as would please God. He scented his missive with a noble Persian powder, rolled it up, tied it with a silken cord, and secretly sent it to her by the hands of an old maidservant.

When the maiden read his words, she turned scarlet. In the first flush of confusion, her inclination was to tear the letter to pieces or show it immediately to her mother. But then, she had known and liked the youth well as a child, and in his words she perceived a certain diffidence and tenderness, so she did no such thing; instead, she gave the letter back to the old woman, saying: “Return this letter to him who has written it, and tell him that he may never again address such words to me. Tell him also that by my parents I have been promised as a bride to God; thus, I may never offer my hand to any man, but shall stand firm in my resolve to serve and honor Him in virginal purity, for love unto Him is higher and worthier than human love. Further, tell him that I hope not to find even one man whose love is higher and worthier than God's, and so I would persist in my solemn vow. To him who has written this letter I wish God's peace, which surpasseth all understanding. And now get you hence and know that never again shall I accept such a message from your hands.”