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The Brook Kerith: A Syrian story, a novel by George Augustus Moore |
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Chapter 11 |
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_ CHAPTER XI The dogs barked as he unlocked the gate, but a few words quieted them (they still remembered his voice) and he crept upstairs to his room, weary in body and sore of foot, for he had come a long way, having accompanied Jesus, whom he had met under the cliffs abutting the lake, to the little pathway cut in the shoulder of the hill that leads to Capernaum. He had not recognised him as he passed, which was not strange, so unseemly were the ragged shirt and the cloak of camel's or goat's hair he wore over it, patched along and across, one long tatter hanging on a loose thread. It caught in his feet, and perforce he hitched it up as he walked, and Joseph remembered that he looked upon the passenger as a mendicant wonder-worker on his round from village to village. But Jesus had not gone very far when Joseph was stopped by a memory of a face seen long ago: a pale bony olive face, lit with brilliant eyes. It is he! he cried; and starting in pursuit and quickly overtaking Jesus, he called his name. Jesus turned, and there was no doubt when the men stood face to face that the shepherd Joseph had seen in the cenoby in converse with the president, and the wandering beggar by the lake shore, were one and the same person. Jesus asked him which way he was walking, and he answered that all directions were the same to him, for he was only come out for a breath of fresh air before bed-time. But thinking he had expressed himself vulgarly, he added other words and waited for Jesus to speak of the beauty of God's handiwork. Jesus merely mentioned in answer that he was going to Capernaum, where he lodged with Simon Peter. But he had not forgotten the brotherhood by the Dead Sea, and invited Joseph to accompany him and tell him of those whom he had left behind. We are of the same brotherhood, he said; and then, as if noticing Joseph's embarrassment, or you are a proselyte, maybe, who at the end of the first year retired from the order? Many do so. Joseph did not know how to answer this question, for he had not obtained permission from the president to seek Jesus in Egypt, and it seemed to him that the most truthful account he could give of himself at the cenoby was to say that he was not there long enough to consider himself even a proselyte. He lived in the cenoby as a visitor, rather than as one attached to the order; but how far he might consider himself an Essene did not matter to anybody. Besides he wished to hear Jesus talk rather than to talk about himself, so he compared his residence with the Essenes to a clue out of which a long thread had unravelled: a thread, he said, that led me into the desert in search of thee. Jesus had known Banu, in the desert, and listened attentively while Joseph told him how Banu was interrupted while speaking of the resurrection by a vision of John baptizing Jesus, and had bidden him go to Jordan and get baptism from John. But it was not John's baptism I sought, but thee, and I arrived breathless, to hear that thou hadst gone away with him, John not being able to bear the cold of the water any longer. Afterwards I sought thee hither and thither, till hearing of thee in Egypt I went there and sought thee from synagogue to synagogue. A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it, Jesus answered gently, and in a tenderer voice than his scrannel peacock throat would have led one to expect. And as if foreseeing an ardent disciple he began to speak to Joseph of God, his speech moving on with a gentle motion like that of clouds wreathing and unwreathing, finding new shapes for every period, and always beautiful shapes. He often stopped speaking and his eyes became fixed, as if he saw beyond the things we all see; and after an interval he would begin to speak again; and Joseph heard that he had met John among the hills and listened to him, and that if he accepted baptism from him it was because he wished to follow John: but John sought to establish the kingdom of God within the law, and so a dancing-girl asked for his head. It seemed as if Jesus were on the point of some tremendous avowal, but if so it passed away like a cloud, and he put his hand on Joseph's shoulder affectionately and asked him to tell him about Egypt, a country which he said he had never heard of before. Whereupon Joseph raised his eyes and saw in Jesus a travelling wonder-worker come down from a northern village--a peasant, without knowledge of the world and of the great Roman Empire. At every step Jesus' ignorance of the world surprised Joseph more and more. He seemed to believe that all the nations were at war, and from further discourse Joseph learnt that Jesus could not speak Greek, and he marvelled at his ignorance, for Jesus only knew such Hebrew as is picked up in the synagogues. He did not seek to conceal his ignorance of this world from Joseph, and almost made parade of it, as if he was aware that one must discard a great deal to gain a little, as if he would impress this truth upon Joseph, almost as if he would reprove him for having spent so much time on learning Greek, for instance, and Greek philosophy. He treated these things as negligible when Joseph spoke of them, and evinced more interest in Joseph himself, who admitted he had returned from philosophy to the love of God. Now sitting on his bed, kept awake by his memories, Joseph relived in thought the hours he had spent with Jesus. He seemed to comprehend the significance of every word much better now than when he was with Jesus, and he deplored his obtuseness and revised all the answers given to Jesus. He remembered with sorrow how he tried to explain to Jesus the teaching of the Alexandrian philosophers regarding the Scriptures, paining Jesus very much by his recital but he had continued to explain for the sake of the answer that he knew would come at last. It did come. He remembered Jesus saying that philosophies change in different men, but the love of God is the same in all men. A great truth, Joseph said to himself, for every school is in opposition to another school. But how did Jesus come to know this being without philosophy? He had been tempted to ask how he was able to get at the truth of things without the Greek language and without education, but refrained lest a question should break the harmony of the evening. The past was not yet past and sitting on his bed in the moonlight Joseph could re-see the plain covered with beautiful grasses and flowers, with low flowering bushes waving over dusky headlands, for it was dark as they crossed the plain; and they had heard rather than seen the rushing stream, bubbling out of the earth, making music in the still night. He knew the stream from early childhood, but he had never really known it until he stood with Jesus under the stars by the narrow pathway cut in the shoulder of the hill, whither the way leads to Capernaum, for it was there that Jesus took his hands and said the words: "Our Father which is in Heaven." At these words their eyes were raised to the skies, and Jesus said: whoever admires the stars and the flowers finds God in his heart and sees him in his neighbour's face. And as Joseph sat, his hands on his knees, he recalled the moment that Jesus turned from him abruptly and passed into the shadow of the hillside that fell across the flowering mead. He heard his footsteps and had listened, repressing the passionate desire to follow him and to say: having found thee, I can leave thee never again. It was fear of Jesus that prevented him from following Jesus, and he returned slowly the way he came, his eyes fixed on the stars, for the day was now well behind the hills and the night all over the valley, calm and still. The stars in their allotted places, he said: as they have always been and always will be. He stood watching them. Behind the stars that twinkled were stars that blazed; behind the stars that blazed were smaller stars, and behind them a sort of luminous dust. And all this immensity is God's dwelling-place, he said. The stars are God's eyes; we live under his eyes and he has given us a beautiful garden to live in. Are we worthy of it? he asked; and Jew though he was he forgot God for a moment in the sweetness of the breathing of earth, for there is no more lovely plain in the spring of the year than the Plain of Gennesaret. Every breath of air brought a new and exquisite scent to him, and through the myrtle bushes he could hear the streams singing their way down to the lake; and when he came to the lake's edge he heard the warble that came into his ear when he was a little child, which it retained always. He heard it in Egypt, under the Pyramids, and the cataracts of the Nile were not able to silence it in his ears. But suddenly from among the myrtle bushes a song arose. It began with a little phrase of three notes, which the bird repeated, as if to impress the listener and prepare him for the runs and trills and joyous little cadenzas that were to follow. A sudden shower of jewels it seemed like, and when the last drops had fallen the bird began another song, a continuation of the first, but more voluptuous and intense; and then, as if he felt that he had set the theme sufficiently, he started away into new trills and shakes and runs, piling cadenza upon cadenza till the theme seemed lost, but the bird held it in memory while all his musical extravagances were flowing, and when the inevitable moment came he repeated the first three notes. Again Joseph heard the warbling water, and it seemed to him that he could hear the stars throbbing. It was one of those moments when the soul of man seems to break, to yearn for that original unity out of which some sad fate has cast it--a moment when the world seems to be one thing and not several things: the stars and the stream, the odours afloat upon the stream, the bird's song and the words of Jesus: whosoever admires the stars and flowers finds God in his heart, seemed to become all blended into one extraordinary harmony; and unable to resist the emotion of the moment any longer, Joseph threw himself upon the ground and prayed that the moment he was living in might not be taken from him, but that it might endure for ever. But while he prayed, the moment was passing, and becoming suddenly aware that it had gone, he rose from his knees and returned home mentally weary and sad at heart; but sitting on his bedside the remembrance that he was to meet Jesus in the morning at Capernaum called up the ghost of a departed ecstasy, and his head drowsing upon his pillow he fell asleep, hushed by remembrances. _ |
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