BOOK V
ITHE SUPREME NIGHT“You are loved of the gods,” said the old gaoler. “If I, a poor slave, had committed the hundredth part of your crimes, I should have been bound upon the rack, hung up by the feet, lashed with thongs, burnt with pincers. They would have poured vinegar into my nostrils, overwhelmed and crushed me with bricks, and if I had died under the agony, my body would already be food for the jackals of the burning plains. But you who have stolen, assassinated, profaned, you may expect nothing more than the gentle hemlock, and in the meanwhile you enjoy a good room. May Zeus blast me with his thunderbolt if I can tell why! You probably know somebody at the palace.”“Give me figs,” said Chrysis; “my mouth is dry.”The old slave brought her a dozen ripe figs in a green basket.Chrysis was left alone.She sat down and got up again, she walked round the room, she struck the walls with the palms of her hands without thinking of anything whatever. She let down her hair to cool it, and then put it up again almost immediately.They had dressed her in a long garment of white wool. The stuff was hot. Chrysis was bathed in perspiration. She stretched her arms, yawned, and leaned herself against the lofty window.Outside, the silvery moon shone in a sky of liquid purity, a sky so pale and clear that not a star was visible.It was on just such a night that, seven years before, Chrysis had left the land of Gennesaret.She remembered . . . They were five. They were sellers of ivory. Their long-tailed horses were adorned with parti-coloured tufts. They had met the child at the edge of a round cistern . . .And before that, the blue lake, the transparent sky, the light air of the land of Galilee. . . . .The house was environed with pink flax-plants and tamarisks. Thorny caper-bushes pricked one’s fingers when one went a-catching butterflies . . . One could almost see the wind in the undulations of the pine grasses . . .ill-079The little girls bathed in a limpid brook where one found red shells under the flowering laurels: and there were flowers upon the water, and flowers all over the mead, and great lilacs upon the mountains, and the line of the mountain was that of a young breast . . .Chrysis closed her eyes with a faint smile which suddenly died away. The idea of death had just occurred to her. And she felt that, until the last, she would be incapable of ceasing to think.“Ah!” she said to herself, “what have I done? Why did I meet that man? Why did he listen to me? Why did I let myself be caught in the trap? How is it that, even now, I regret nothing?“Not to love or to die: that is the choice God has given me. What have I done to deserve punishment?”And fragments of sacred verses occurred to her that she had heard quoted in her childhood. She had not thought of them for seven years. But they returned, one after the other, with an implacable precision, to apply to her life and predict her penalty.She murmured:“It is written:I remember thy love when thou wast young.For of old thou hast broken thy yoke.And burst thy bonds;And thou hast said: I will no longer serve.But upon every high hill,And under every green tree,Thou hast wandered, playing the harlot. [1]“It is written:I will follow after my lovers,Who give me my bread and my wine,And my wool and my flax,And my oil and my wine. [2]“It is written:How canst thou say: I am not polluted?See thy way in the valley,Know what thou hast done,O thou dromedary traversing her ways,O thou wild ass,Panting and ever lustful,Who could prevent thee from satisfying thy desire? [3]“It is written:She has played the harlot in the land of Egypt.She has doted upon paramoursWhose flesh is as the flesh of asses,And whose issue is like the issue of horses.Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth,In bruising thy teats by the EgyptiansFor the paps of thy youth.” [4]“Oh!” she cried. “It is I! It is I!”“And it is written again:Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers,And thou wouldst return again to me! saith the Lord. [5]“But my chastisement also is written:Behold: I raise up thy lovers against thee:They shall judge thee according to their judgments.They shall take away thy nose and thine ears,And thy remnant shall fall by the sword. [6]“And again:She is undone: she is stripped naked, she is led away captiveHer servants wail like dovesAnd taber upon their breasts. [7]“But does one know what the Scripture says?” she added to console herself. “Is it not written elsewhere:I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom. [8]“And elsewhere does not Scripture give this advice:Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart: for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white, and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest. [9]She shivered, and repeated in a low voice:For there is no work, nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave,whither thou goest!Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to see the sun. [10]Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes, or ever thou goest to thy long home and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, or the dust return to the earth as it was. [11]Shivering once more, she repeated slowly:Or the dust return to the earth as it was.And as she took her head in her hands in order to stifle her thoughts, she suddenly felt, without having foreseen it, the mortuary form of her cranium through the living skin: the empty temples, the enormous orbits, the flat nose under the cartilage, and the protruding jaws.Horror! this it was, then, that she was about to become! With frightful lucidity, she had the vision of her corpse, and she passed her hands over her whole body in order to probe to the bottom an idea which, though simple, had never yet occurred to her—that she boreher skeleton within her, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing one carries about, a spectre inseparable from the human form, and that the framework of life is already the symbol of the tomb.A furious desire to live, to see everything again, to begin everything again, to do everything again, suddenly came over her. It was a revolt in the presence of death: the impossibility of admitting that she would never see the evening of the dawning day: the impossibility of understanding how this beauty, this body, this active thought, this opulent life of the flesh could cease to be, in its zenith, and go to rottenness.The door opened quietly.Demetrios entered.[1]JeremiahII, 2, 20.[2]HoseaII, 5.[3]JeremiahII, 23, 24.[4]EzekielXXIII, 20, 21.[5]JeremiahIII, 1.[6]EzekielXXIII, 22, 25.[7]NahumII, 7.[8]HoseaIV, 14.[9]EcclesiastesIX, 7, 10.[10]EcclesiastesXI, 7.[11]EcclesiastesXII, 1, 5-7.
“You are loved of the gods,” said the old gaoler. “If I, a poor slave, had committed the hundredth part of your crimes, I should have been bound upon the rack, hung up by the feet, lashed with thongs, burnt with pincers. They would have poured vinegar into my nostrils, overwhelmed and crushed me with bricks, and if I had died under the agony, my body would already be food for the jackals of the burning plains. But you who have stolen, assassinated, profaned, you may expect nothing more than the gentle hemlock, and in the meanwhile you enjoy a good room. May Zeus blast me with his thunderbolt if I can tell why! You probably know somebody at the palace.”
“Give me figs,” said Chrysis; “my mouth is dry.”
The old slave brought her a dozen ripe figs in a green basket.
Chrysis was left alone.
She sat down and got up again, she walked round the room, she struck the walls with the palms of her hands without thinking of anything whatever. She let down her hair to cool it, and then put it up again almost immediately.
They had dressed her in a long garment of white wool. The stuff was hot. Chrysis was bathed in perspiration. She stretched her arms, yawned, and leaned herself against the lofty window.
Outside, the silvery moon shone in a sky of liquid purity, a sky so pale and clear that not a star was visible.
It was on just such a night that, seven years before, Chrysis had left the land of Gennesaret.
She remembered . . . They were five. They were sellers of ivory. Their long-tailed horses were adorned with parti-coloured tufts. They had met the child at the edge of a round cistern . . .
And before that, the blue lake, the transparent sky, the light air of the land of Galilee. . . . .
The house was environed with pink flax-plants and tamarisks. Thorny caper-bushes pricked one’s fingers when one went a-catching butterflies . . . One could almost see the wind in the undulations of the pine grasses . . .
ill-079
The little girls bathed in a limpid brook where one found red shells under the flowering laurels: and there were flowers upon the water, and flowers all over the mead, and great lilacs upon the mountains, and the line of the mountain was that of a young breast . . .
Chrysis closed her eyes with a faint smile which suddenly died away. The idea of death had just occurred to her. And she felt that, until the last, she would be incapable of ceasing to think.
“Ah!” she said to herself, “what have I done? Why did I meet that man? Why did he listen to me? Why did I let myself be caught in the trap? How is it that, even now, I regret nothing?
“Not to love or to die: that is the choice God has given me. What have I done to deserve punishment?”
And fragments of sacred verses occurred to her that she had heard quoted in her childhood. She had not thought of them for seven years. But they returned, one after the other, with an implacable precision, to apply to her life and predict her penalty.
She murmured:
“It is written:
I remember thy love when thou wast young.For of old thou hast broken thy yoke.And burst thy bonds;And thou hast said: I will no longer serve.But upon every high hill,And under every green tree,Thou hast wandered, playing the harlot. [1]
“It is written:
I will follow after my lovers,Who give me my bread and my wine,And my wool and my flax,And my oil and my wine. [2]
“It is written:
How canst thou say: I am not polluted?See thy way in the valley,Know what thou hast done,O thou dromedary traversing her ways,O thou wild ass,Panting and ever lustful,Who could prevent thee from satisfying thy desire? [3]
“It is written:
She has played the harlot in the land of Egypt.She has doted upon paramoursWhose flesh is as the flesh of asses,And whose issue is like the issue of horses.Thus thou callest to remembrance the lewdness of thy youth,In bruising thy teats by the EgyptiansFor the paps of thy youth.” [4]
“Oh!” she cried. “It is I! It is I!”
“And it is written again:
Thou hast played the harlot with many lovers,And thou wouldst return again to me! saith the Lord. [5]
“But my chastisement also is written:
Behold: I raise up thy lovers against thee:They shall judge thee according to their judgments.They shall take away thy nose and thine ears,And thy remnant shall fall by the sword. [6]
“And again:
She is undone: she is stripped naked, she is led away captiveHer servants wail like dovesAnd taber upon their breasts. [7]
“But does one know what the Scripture says?” she added to console herself. “Is it not written elsewhere:
I will not punish your daughters when they commit whoredom. [8]
“And elsewhere does not Scripture give this advice:
Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy and drink thy wine with a merry heart: for God now accepteth thy works. Let thy garments be always white, and let thy head lack no ointment. Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest. [9]
She shivered, and repeated in a low voice:
For there is no work, nor device nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave,whither thou goest!Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is to see the sun. [10]
Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thy heart and in the sight of thine eyes, or ever thou goest to thy long home and the mourners go about the streets: or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern, or the dust return to the earth as it was. [11]
Shivering once more, she repeated slowly:
Or the dust return to the earth as it was.
And as she took her head in her hands in order to stifle her thoughts, she suddenly felt, without having foreseen it, the mortuary form of her cranium through the living skin: the empty temples, the enormous orbits, the flat nose under the cartilage, and the protruding jaws.
Horror! this it was, then, that she was about to become! With frightful lucidity, she had the vision of her corpse, and she passed her hands over her whole body in order to probe to the bottom an idea which, though simple, had never yet occurred to her—that she boreher skeleton within her, that it was not a result of death, a metamorphosis, a culmination, but a thing one carries about, a spectre inseparable from the human form, and that the framework of life is already the symbol of the tomb.
A furious desire to live, to see everything again, to begin everything again, to do everything again, suddenly came over her. It was a revolt in the presence of death: the impossibility of admitting that she would never see the evening of the dawning day: the impossibility of understanding how this beauty, this body, this active thought, this opulent life of the flesh could cease to be, in its zenith, and go to rottenness.
The door opened quietly.
Demetrios entered.
[1]JeremiahII, 2, 20.[2]HoseaII, 5.[3]JeremiahII, 23, 24.[4]EzekielXXIII, 20, 21.[5]JeremiahIII, 1.[6]EzekielXXIII, 22, 25.[7]NahumII, 7.[8]HoseaIV, 14.[9]EcclesiastesIX, 7, 10.[10]EcclesiastesXI, 7.[11]EcclesiastesXII, 1, 5-7.