Report to Grego (41 page)

The voice ceased. I kept waiting, my cheeks fiery red from shame and anger. And then somewhere—was it from the desert itself, I wonder—I gained the strength to lift my head rebelliously and object.

“I did reach the end, and at the end of every road I found the abyss.”

“You found your own inability to go further.
Abyss
is the name we give to whatever we cannot bridge. There is no abyss, no end of the road; there is only the soul of man, which names everything in keeping with its own bravery or cowardice. Christ, Buddha, and Moses all found abysses. But they erected bridges and crossed over. For centuries now, human flocks have been crossing over behind them.”

“Some people become heroes through God's decree, some through their own struggles. I struggle.”

A frightening laugh broke out all around me, and also inside my vitals.

“Heroes? But to be a hero means to subordinate yourself to a rhythm transcending the individual. As for you, you are still full of anxiety and shiftlessness. Unable to subdue the chaos inside you and to create the one integral Word, you whine away in self-justification:
The old forms are too confining . . .' But if you advanced further in thought or action, you would be able to reach the heroic boundaries wherein ten souls such as yours could fit comfortably and be able to work. If you received your impetus from known ecclesiastical symbols, you would be able to propel yourself into religious experiments of your own, and to give (you are seeking this but have not yet discovered it) a contemporary form to the age-old passions of God and man.”

“You are unjust. Your heart knows no pity. I have heard you before, O merciless voice—every time I've halted at a crossroad to choose my path.”

“And you shall hear me always: whenever you run away.”

“I have never run away. I always advance, abandoning what I love, and my heart breaks in two.”

“How long will you continue to do this?”

“Until I reach my summit. There I shall rest.”

“There is no summit; there are only the heights. There is no rest; there is only struggle. Why are you astonished? Why do you stare like that with protruding eyes? Don't you know me yet? You think I am God's voice, do you? No, I am your voice. I travel with you always, never leaving you. Alas if I ever did leave you by yourself! Once, another time when I sprang angrily out of your bowels, you gave me a name which I have kept, because I like it. I am your Traveling Companion the Tigress.”

The voice ceased. Recognizing it, I felt reassured. Why should I fear this Tigress? We always travel together. We have seen everything, enjoyed everything together. The two of us have eaten and drunk together in foreign lands; together we have suffered, together enjoyed cities, women, and ideas. When we return to our quiet cell laden with spoils and covered with wounds, this Tigress silently claws her way into the top of my head, where her lair is. She deploys herself adhesively around my skull, thrusts her talons into my brain, and the two of us, without resorting to words, ponder all we have seen, and yearn for all we have yet to see.

We rejoice that the whole of the visible and invisible world is a deep inscrutable mystery—incomprehensible, beyond the intelligence, beyond desire, beyond certitude. We chat together, my Traveling Companion the Tigress and myself, laughing because we are so hard, tender, and insatiable. We laugh at our insatiability,
even though we know for certain that one evening we shall dine off a handful of dust and be sated.

O soul of man, O my Traveling Companion the Tigress: what a joy to live, love the earth, and look upon death without fear!

I got up at dawn, anxious to walk in the desert. The morning star still stood watch; a faint light had already invaded the mountain peaks. The partridges had awakened, and the entire mountain with the Holy Summit to which Jehovah had descended, rang with cackling. The sky had cleared, the low-lying snows had melted and been swallowed by the sand, but high on the mountains the snow glittered pinkly in the first beams of the sun. Not a single voice, no sign of water, no green grass. Inhuman solitude made of sand and God.

Surely only two kinds of people can bear to live in such a desert: lunatics and prophets. The mind topples here not from fright but from sacred awe; sometimes it collapses downward, losing human stability, sometimes it springs upward, enters heaven, sees God face to face, touches the hem of His blazing garment without being burned, hears what He says, and taking this, slings it into men's consciousness. Only in the desert do we see the birth of these fierce, indomitable souls who rise up in rebellion even against God himself and stand before Him fearlessly, their minds in resplendent consubstantiality with the skirts of the Lord. God sees them and is proud, because in them His breath has not vented its force; in them, God has not stooped to becoming a man.

Two prophets were once traveling in the desert and disputing. One claimed that God was fire, the other that He was a honeycomb. Though they shouted themselves hoarse, neither was able to bring the other over to his side.

Finally, the first pointed in exasperation to the mountain opposite them. “If I am telling the truth, the mountain will begin to shake.”

And even as he said this, the mountain began to shake.

“That's no proof!” answered the second prophet scornfully.

“If I am telling the truth, an angel will descend from heaven and wash my feet.”

And even as he said this, an angel descended from heaven, crouched, and began to wash his feet.

But the other shrugged his shoulders. “That is no proof,” he said.

“If I am telling the truth, God will call out, ‘It is true!'”

And even as he said this, a voice sounded from the heavens: “It is true!”

But the second prophet only shrugged his soulders again. “That is no proof,” he said.

At that exact instant Elijah was passing by heaven. Seeing God laughing, he approached and asked, “Why are you laughing, Lord?”

God answered: “Because I am pleased, Elijah. Down below on earth I see two men talking, and they are my true sons.”

As I went along I kept thinking with admiration of the two fierce prophets; it seemed to me that I could still see their footprints in the sand. Happy is the father deemed worthy of begetting such sons, I said to myself; happy the desert that saw walking upon it such lions out of God's jungle.

T
he next day, together with Father Agapios and Father Pachomios the painter, I climbed the Holy Summit, the sheer fortress where Moses saw God “face to face” and spoke with Him. From a distance the supremely abrupt ridge line looked like the mane of a wild boar. “What are ye worth, ye remaining mountains,” asks Scripture, “ye mountains covered with grass, flocks, and cheeses? One and one only is the true mountain, Mount Sinai, where God descended and which He now inhabits.”

Jehovah, Israel's fearsome sheik, sat atop this Hebraic Olympus, sat on His Summit as fire, making the mountain steam. No one could touch Him; no one could view Him face to face. Whoever saw Him died. Jehovah was identical with fire. He devoured whatever the Hebrews threw into the flames. And above all else, He loved to devour their children.

As we mounted the 3,100 steps leading from the mountain's foot to its top, we passed a low arched doorway opened into the rock. In the times when men trembled to touch the Summit, a confessor sat here and heard their confessions. Whoever climbed the Lord's mountain had to possess clean hands and an innocent heart; otherwise the Summit would kill him. Today the doorway is deserted. Soiled hands and sinful hearts are able to pass by without fear, for the Summit kills no longer.

We passed by.

Farther above us was the cave where the Prophet Elijah saw his
great vision. He entered the cave, and God's voice thundered, “Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be.”

This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.

Still farther above, Pachomios halted and pointed to a ledge. “This is where Moses stood on the day the Hebrews fought the Amalekites. As long as he kept his arms raised high, the Hebrews conquered, but when he grew tired and lowered them, the Hebrews were put to rout. Then two priests, Aaron and Hur, held his raised arms in place, until finally the last of the enemy was ‘discomfited with the edge of the sword.'”

In Pachomios's guileless soul all these legends assumed an unequivocal significance; he stared in goggle-eyed amazement, as though telling about sacred monsters—dinosaurs and megatheria—that still roamed the mountains and could be seen by whoever was pure of heart.

Slender, sear Father Agapios led the way with youthful agility. He did not talk. Displeased by Pachomios' chattering, he was anxious to reach the top.

When he set foot on the Holy Summit, my heart shook. Never had my eyes enjoyed a more tragic, more extraordinary sight. Below us, Arabia Petraea with its deep purple mountains; in the distance the blue ranges of Arabia Felix and the bright green sea glittering like a turquoise. To the west, the desert steaming in the sun, and behind it, far in the background, the mountains of Africa. It is here, I reflected, that the soul of a proud or despairing man finds the ultimate happiness.

We entered the little chapel on the summit. Pachomios began scratching the walls with his fingernails, searching for the remains of ancient frescoes. He pointed triumphantly to the window's
diminutive Byzantine columns and proudly summoned me to see the symbol of the Holy Spirit, two Byzantine doves with joined beaks. He was struggling to discover and reconstruct the old life, not wanting to allow the past to pass away. Here on this summit where God descended like an insatiable flame, this spirit of archaeological excavation annoyed me. I turned to the monk and asked him, “Father Pachomios, what do you imagine God is like?”

He gave me a perplexed look. Then, after reflecting a moment, he answered, “Like a father who loves his children.”

“Shame on you!” I cried. “Here, on the top of Mount Sinai, do you dare talk in such a way about God? Haven't you read the Scriptures? The Lord God is ‘a consuming fire'!”

“Why do you tell me that?”

“So you'll let Him burn all this—the past. Follow God's fire, Pachomios, and do not collect the ashes.”

“Listen to my advice and stop working yourself up about the nature of God,” said Father Agapios, finally parting his lips. “Don't touch fire, you'll be burned. Don't desire to see God, you'll be blinded.”

Opening the sack which he was carrying on his back, he brought out a brace of roast doves, two lobsters, some walnuts and dates, a wooden jug filled with date raki, and a large loaf of whole-wheat bread.

“Dinner is served!”

Suddenly we realized how hungry we were. We set the food out on a stone bench at the spot where Moses' footprint, so it was said, could still be seen: a depression resembling the coffin of a small child. Forgetting the kissing doves, the ones of stone, Pachomios gave himself over to the roast doves with voracious appetite. Seldom have I seen a man put eyes, hands, and teeth into operation with such rapacity. He even took the tiny bones that remained, piled them in front of him, and began to lick them.

“The doves have come to life, Father Pachomios,” I said with a laugh. “Go into the chapel and you'll see that they aren't there any more.”

“Why laugh?” said Pachomios. “Everything is possible.”

“Yes, and if the Holy Spirit was a dove, you'd eat Him too!” exclaimed Agapios, who did not care at all for the other's gluttony. Crossing himself, he gazed out over the desert and sighed.

“Why do you sigh, Father Agapios?” I inquired, longing to learn more about this strict monk who, despite his age, had climbed the mountain with such agility.

“How can I not sigh, my child,” he replied, “when my hands, my feet—and my heart—are covered with mud? The hour is finally come when I must present myself before God—with what hands, what feet, what face? My hands are all bloody, my feet filled with mud. Who is going to cleanse them for me?”

“Christ will do it, Father Agapios,” said Pachomios in order to comfort him. “Otherwise, why did He descend to earth? You should say to Him, ‘Christ, here are my hands, here are my feet—wash them!'”

I laughed. Was this then God's work, to wash our feet?

Pachomios was offended. “Why do you laugh?” he demanded.

“With your permission, Father Pachomios,” I replied, “I shall answer you with a parable. Once upon a time, in Arabia, there lived a king who was very, very cunning. Each morning he gathered his slaves together before dawn and did not permit them to begin work until he had commanded the sun to rise. One day a hoary sage went up to him and said, ‘Don't you know that the sun does not await your command?' ‘I know, I know, old master. But tell me, what kind of a god would we have if he could not become my instrument?' . . . Do you understand now, Father Pachomios?”

But while I was speaking, Pachomios had discovered a tiny bone with some lean meat on it. He gnawed away and did not answer.

I turned to Agapios in order the change the subject.

“How did you become a monk, Father Agapios?”

“How did I become a monk? It was not my wish, it was God's. When I reached the age of twenty, I was seized by a great yearning to don the robe. But the devil put obstacles in my path. What obstacles? you will ask. Well, just this: my affairs were going well, I was making money. And what does making money mean? It means forgetting God. I was a contractor; I built bridges, houses, roads, earned money hand over fist. As soon as I lose my money, I kept telling myself, I'll go and become a monk. God took pity on me. I played the stock market and lost my shirt. The Lord be praised, I said. I cut the cord and left. You know how they cut
the cord on a dirigible and it rises to heaven? That's exactly how I left the world.”