Report to Grego (71 page)

Since I had no clear idea which my soul's countenance was or how it looked, the struggle was a difficult and desperate one. I was battling to find this countenance by fashioning the clay. I had no confidence in the mind, for this can discern nothing but the body, the body's firm outlines. It does not see the flame which shimmers around the body and leaps from the scalp and is battered by the wind like a banner. This, precisely this, is the soul. Therefore, I allowed only mystic forces to guide my fingers.

Concentrating for three days, silent and immobile like a fakir, I relived my life. Nothing had perished. Even the most insignificant details—a flowering pomegranate tree near Kalamata, a fragrant Santorinian melon so big I could hardly put my arms around it, a swarthy little girl selling jasmine in Naples, the joyously triumphant clamor from the wooden clogs of a widow dancing at a wedding in the courtyard of her house, the two great arcs formed by the eyebrows of a Circassian woman in Moscow—all, all rose from the trap door of memory and filled my loins with happiness. When I went to bed at night, I continued my travels in my sleep, with the sole difference that these same travels hovered in the air at night, relieved of the weight of truth and composed of a more buoyant, more precious substance.

Is there anything truer than truth? Yes, legend. This gives eternal meaning to ephemeral truth. All my wanderings were joining together in harmony now, being compressed into a single all-precious journey which knew full well whence it had set out, why, and where it was going. Each stopping point was not a meaningless whim of chance, but rather the application of destiny's plan.
All my journeys had become a red line beginning from man and ascending in order to reach God, in other words the supreme summit of hope.

On the fourth day, as I was fighting to see how far the red line marking my ascension had reached up to now, I was suddenly overcome by sacred awe. This red line had not been inscribed by my blood; someone else was ascending, someone else's blood was flowing from his wounds and tracing a red course over land and sea—someone incomparably higher than me, a gigantic ancestor, a sea-fighter and mountaineer. I was no more than his shadow, the faithful shadow following him. I did not perceive him; I simply heard his sigh or thunderous laughter from time to time. I would look around me then and see no one. But I felt his immense breath hanging over me.

My eyes full of his presence (not the eyes of clay, the others), I bowed over my paper. But now the blank page was not a mirror to reflect my face, as it had been previously. I saw another face for the first time, that of the great Fellow Voyager, and I recognized him immediately. Wearing a pointed sailor's cap, he had an eagle's piercing glance, short curly beard, tiny quick-darting eyes as seductive as a snake's, and eyebrows slightly puckered, as though he were weighing with his sight a ram he had a fancy to steal, or a wind-laden cloud which had suddenly emerged from the sea, or his own strength against the strength of the immortals, before deciding whether a display of his valor or his wiles would be to his best advantage.

Strength lies in wait on his face, silent and motionless, ready to pounce. He is an athlete who reveres death and wrestles with it carefully and skillfully, without shouts or insults, looking it straight in the eye. Both anointed with oil, both completely naked, they wrestle in the light, observing the intricate rules of battle. Though the great Fellow Voyager knows full well who his opponent is, he does not fall prey to panic. Raising his eyes, he regards death's face as it flows and takes on innumerable faces—sometimes a woman on the sandy shore holding her breast and singing, sometimes a god who raises tempests and wishes to drown him, sometimes a thin column of smoke above the roof of his house. Licking his lips, he enjoys all of death's faces and wrestles with them, hugging them greedily.

It was you—you! How could I do anything but recognize you at once, O Shipcaptain of Greece, grandfather, beloved ancestor! You with your pointed cap, your ever-shrewd insatiable mind that creates myths and relishes lies as works of art; ravisher, pighead, masterful blender of human prudence and divine folly, proudly erect on the ship of Greece and not abandoning the helm for how many thousands of years already and how many thousands to come!

I see you on every side; my mind reels. Sometimes you seem like a hundred-year-old patriarch, sometimes a stalwart with curly blue hair sprinkled with sea salt, sometimes an infant grasping the two breasts of earth and sea, and suckling. I see you on every side and struggle to compress you into a word, to immobilize your countenance and declare, “I've got you, you won't get away!” But you smash the word (how could you ever fit inside it!), slip out of my clutches, and I hear you laughing in the air above me.

What names did I not set as traps to catch you! I addressed you as God-swindler, God-battler, God-abolisher, God-deceiver, seven lives, multiple mind, subterfuge mind, fox mind, crossroad mind, mind of many summits, right-left mind, heart-deceiver, heart-battler, heart-knower, house-closer, soul-abductor, soul guide, acrite, world traveler, world-harvester, bow mind, fortress-builder, fortress-abolisher, sea-fighter, ocean breast, dolphin, man of five minds, double-triple will, leader, solitary, fowler, majestic three-masted schooner of hope!

And once in the very, very beginning when I did not know you, in order to keep you from going away, I set in your path what I thought was the most masterful trap of all—Ithaca. But you burst into laughter, took a deep breath, and Ithaca was reduced to a thousand pieces. That was when I understood—thanks to you, homeland-abolisher—that Ithaca does not exist. The only thing that exists is the sea, and a barque as tiny as a man's body, with Mind as captain. This captain stands in his osseous cabin. Both male and female, he sows and gives birth; gives birth to the world's sorrows and joys, its beauties, virtues, adventures, all its bloody, beloved phantasmagoria. He stands motionless with his eyes fixed in the direction of death's cataract, which drags his little barque toward it and insatiably pays out its five famished tentacles over land and sea. “Whatever we've still time for,” he cries, “whether a glass of
cool water, a breeze on our temples, a woman's warm breath, an idea, whatever falls our way, let's act quickly, lads—we can't possibly lose!”

I had been struggling for a lifetime to stretch my mind until it creaked at the breaking point in order to bring forth a great idea able to give a new meaning to life, a new meaning to death, and comfort to men.

And now, look! With the aid of time, solitude, and the blossoming lemon tree, the idea had turned into a tale. What joy! The blessed hour had arrived, the grub had become a butterfly.

A rabbi of ancient times, Rabbi Nahman, had taught me years before how to know when the hour had come for me to open my mouth and speak, take up my pen and write. He was a simple, cheerful, sainted man who used to advise his disciples how they too could become simple, cheerful, and sainted. But one day they fell at his feet and complained: “Dear Rabbi, why don't you talk like Rabbi Zadig, why don't you sort out great ideas and construct great theories, so that people will listen to you in a transport, their mouths agape? Can't you do anything but speak with simple words like an old grandmother, and tell tales?”

The good rabbi smiled. It was quite some time before he replied. Finally he opened his mouth.

“One day the nettles asked the rosebush, ‘Madam Rosebush, won't you teach us your secret? How do you make the rose?' And the rosebush answered, ‘My secret is extremely simple, Sister Nettles. All winter long I work the soil patiently, trustfully, lovingly, and have only one thing in mind: the rose. The rains lash me, the winds strip off my leaves, the snows crush me, but I have only one thing in mind: the rose. That, Sister Nettles, is my secret!”

“We don't understand, Master,” said the disciples.

The rabbi laughed. “I don't understand very well myself.”

“Well then, Master?”

“I think I wanted to say something like this: When I have an idea, I work it for a long time, silently, patiently, trustfully, lovingly. And when I open my mouth (what a mystery this is, my children!), when I open my mouth, the idea comes out as a tale.”

He laughed once more.

“We humans call it a tale,” he said, “the rosebush calls it a rose.”

I
had never faced my father with a feeling of tenderness. The fear he called forth in me was so great that all the rest—love, respect, intimacy—vanished. His words were severe, his silence even more severe. He seldom spoke, and when he did open his mouth, his words were measured and well weighed; you could never find grounds to contradict him. He was always right, which seemed to make him invulnerable. I often used to think, Oh, how I wish he'd be wrong for once; perhaps then I'd steel my heart and contradict him. But he never gave such an occasion, and this is something for which one could never forgive him. An oak he was, with a hard trunk, rough leaves, bitter fruit, and no flowers. He ate up all the strength around him; in his shade every other tree withered. I withered in his shade similarly. I did not want to live beneath his breath. Frantic revolts broke out within me when I was young; I was ready to throw myself into dangerous adventures, but I thought of my father each time and my heart turned coward. This is why I was forced to write down all I wished I had done, instead of becoming a great struggler in the realm of action—from fear of my father. He it was who reduced my blood to ink.

W
hen I returned to the little house on the seashore three days later, I felt an untellable, profane sense of relief. A weight, a shadow, had been lifted from me. The mysterious, invisible string tying me to submission and fear had been cut. Now I could say, write, and do what I wanted; I was no longer obliged to render account to anyone. The guardian was gone, the eye that saw and never forgave had set, the slave contract was ripped in two. I was free now, emancipated.

Too late, however. I had already taken a road. I did not choose it, it chose me. All the other roads before and behind me had been blocked. I had settled down into fixed habits, fixed sympathies and antipathies; now it was too late to make an abrupt about-face and change battlefronts. I had to go the whole way along the road I had taken, and reach the end. That and nothing else. Now, however, I had a great advantage. I had been unburdened; at last I could walk at ease and in the manner I myself wished: singing, laughing,
halting, playing. I no longer felt either shame or fear before anyone. I had feared only one man in my life: my father. Now whom was I to fear? When I raised my eyes as a child and looked at him, he seemed a giant to me. As I grew older, everything around me shrank: men, houses, trees. He alone remained always as I had seen him in my childhood: a giant. Towering in front of me, he blocked my share of the sun. In vain did I avoid staying in my father's house, in the lion's den. Though I became shiftless, traveled, threw myself into difficult intellectual adventures, his shadow always remained between me and the light. I voyaged beneath a never-ending solar eclipse.

There is much darkness in me, much of my father. All my life I have fought desperately to transubstantiate this darkness and turn it into light, one little drop of light. It has been a harsh struggle without pity or respite. Had I tired for even an instant and allowed an interval in the hostilities, I would have perished. And if sometimes I emerged victorious, what agony that entailed, how many wounds! I was not born pure, I have fought to become so. Virtue, for me, is not the fruit of my nature, it is the fruit of my struggles. God did not give it to me, I have had to labor in order to conquer it by the sword. For me, virtue's flower is a pile of transubstantiated dung.

This war never came to an end. I have not been completely vanquished so far, nor have I completely triumphed. I struggle continually. At any moment all of me may perish; at any moment all of me may be saved. I am still crossing the Hair Bridge that swings above the abyss.

I
undressed, dove into the sea, and swam. I felt the sacrament of baptism in all its deathless simplicity on that day, understood why so many religions consider water and the bath, in other words baptism, the indispensable, presupposed condition of initiation before a convert begins his new life. The water's coolness penetrates to the marrow of his bones, to the very pith; it finds the soul, and this, seeing the water, beats its wings happily like a young sea gull, washes itself, rejoices, and is refreshed. The simple everyday water is transubstantiated; it becomes the water of eternal life and renews the man. When the convert emerges from the water, the world seems changed to him. The world has not changed, it is
always wonderful and horrible, iniquitous and filled with beauty. But now, after baptism, the eyes that see the world have changed.

When I emerged from the sea, the sun was setting. Opposite me, the two uninhabited islands had pinkened, as though day was breaking. The gentle ripples murmured tenderly upon the white pebbles; the whole ancient shore smiled contentedly. A fishing skiff passed with gleaming oars which left a wake of melted gold wherever they struck and wounded the water. Inside the boat the fisherman sighed heavily, and his sigh resounded in the evening silence, full of complaint and carnal passion. Young and companionless as he must have been, he found the sea's beauty so unendurable that only his Ahh! could contain it.

The tiny islands were violet now, the sea growing darker. Feeling the nocturnal sweetness upon their lids, the night birds opened their eyes; they were hungry. Two bats flew silently above me with gaping beaks, in pursuit of prey. They had once been mice (the experts did not know this, the peasants did) but they had entered a church, eaten Christ's body in the consecrated wafers, and developed wings. As I regarded their mouselike bodies in the semidarkness, once more I was overcome with admiration for the world's secret harmony. Men and animals are governed by the same utterly simple laws. The adventures of the human soul and of Sister Bat are equivalent. The human soul was also a mouse at one time. It ate Christ's body, partook of God in communion, and developed wings.