Balthasar's Odyssey (10 page)

But when in the course of our exchanges I said that in my opinion one of the most beautiful precepts of Christianity was “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, I noticed Maïmoun hesitate. I urged him, in the name of our friendship and of our shared doubts, to tell me what he was thinking.

“At first sight,” he said, “that exhortation seems irreproachable. And anyway, before it was taken over by Jesus, it was also to be found, expressed in similar terms, in Leviticus, chapter 19, verse 18. Even so, I have some reservations about it.”

“What are they?”

“Seeing what most people make of their lives, and of their intelligence, I wouldn't want them to love me as they love themselves.”

I was about to answer, but he raised his hand.

“Wait. There's something else, something more worrying, in my view. Some people are always sure to interpret this precept with more arrogance than magnanimity. They'll read it as saying: What's good for you is good for everyone else. If you know the truth, you ought to use every possible means to rescue lost sheep and set them on the right path again. Hence the forced baptisms imposed on my ancestors in Toledo in the past. And I myself have heard the injunction quoted more often by wolves than by lambs. So I'm sorry — I have doubts about it.”

“You surprise me. And I don't know yet whether I agree with you or not. I'll have to think. I've always considered that the most beautiful saying ...”

“If you're looking for the most beautiful saying to be found in any religion, the most beautiful that ever issued from the lips of man, that's not it. The one I mean was spoken by Jesus, too. He didn't take it from Scripture, though. He just listened to his own heart.”

What could it be? I waited. Maïmoun stopped his mount for a moment to underline the solemnity of his quotation.

“Let him that is without sin among you cast the first stone.”

23 September

Was there an allusion to Marta in the phrase Maïmoun quoted yesterday? I wondered about it all night. There was nothing reproachful in his look; but perhaps there was a subtle invitation to speak. And why should I still be silent, since in my friend's eyes Christ's saying absolved me of what little wrong I may have committed, as well as of my deceitful omissions?

So I made up my mind to tell him everything this very morning: who Marta is, how she came to be in our party, what kind of relations have taken place between her and me, and what kind of relations have not. After the somewhat grotesque episode at Eliazar's house, it became urgently necessary for me to stop dissimulating, otherwise the friendship between Maïmoun and myself might be damaged. What's more, the situation gets more and more complicated every time we halt for the night, and I was going to need the advice of a wise and sympathetic friend.

Well, I didn't get much advice from Maïmoun today, though I did press him. He only told me to keep saying and doing what I've been saying and doing since our journey began. But he did promise to think the matter over some more, and to tell me if anything occurred to him that might make things go more smoothly.

I'm very glad, though, that he didn't hold my deceit and half-truths against me. If anything, he seemed amused by it all. And it seems to me that he now greets Marta with even more deference than before, and with a sort of secret admiration.

It's true her behaviour shows courage. Jam always thinking of myself, my own embarrassment and my own self-esteem, when all I really risk is the odd bit of mischievous or envious gossip. Whereas she stands to lose everything in this petty game, even her life. I don't doubt for a moment that if her brother-in-law had found her, at the beginning of this journey, he'd have had no scruples about cutting her throat and then going back to his people and boasting about it. And if Marta ever returns to Gibelet, even armed with the document she seeks, she'll still face the same dangers as before.

If that day comes, shall I have the courage to defend her?

25 September

This morning, seeing Marta riding apart from our group, solitary, pensive, melancholy, I decided to go back and ride beside her, as I had done a few days ago. But this time I wanted not so much to tell her of my own hopes and fears as to question her and hear what she had to say. To begin with she eluded my questions, but I pressed her to describe what her life had been like in recent years, and what had made her, too, come on this journey.

While I expected to hear a string of complaints, I didn't at all foresee that my taking an interest in her misfortunes would break down a dam and unleash so much rage. A rage I'd never suspected behind her pleasant smiles.

“People never stop talking to me about the end of the world,” she said. “They think they're frightening me. But for me the world ended when the man I loved betrayed me. After first making me betray my own father. Ever since then the sun no longer shines for me, and it wouldn't matter to me if it went out. And the Flood they predict doesn't scare me either — it would just make all men and all women equals in misfortune. Let it come as soon as it likes, whether it's a Deluge of water or of fire! Then I shan't have to tramp the roads begging for a paper that will allow me to live, a wretched document from the powers-that-be certifying that I may love and be married again! Then I shan't have to go from pillar to post any more — or else
everybody
will have to run in all directions! Yes, everybody! The judges, the janissaries, the bishops, and even the sultan! All of them will be running about like cats trapped in a field that's caught fire! Oh, if only Heaven would let me see that!

“People are afraid of seeing the Beast appear. I'm not afraid. The Beast? It's always been there, lurking near me. Every day I've met its scornful look — at home, in the street, even in church. Every day I've felt its bite! It's never stopped devouring my life.”

Marta went on in this vein for some time. I've reported her words from memory — not word for word, I expect, but near enough. And I thought: “My God, woman — how you must have suffered since that time, not so long ago, when you were still my barber's carefree, mischievous daughter!”

At one point I rode near her and put my hand affectionately on hers. At that she fell silent, gave me a swift glance of gratitude, then veiled her face and wept.

For the rest of the day I could do nothing but think about what she'd said and follow her with my eyes. Now, more than ever before, I feel an immense fatherly affection for her. I long to know she's happy, but I wouldn't dare promise to make her happy myself. The most I could do would be to swear I'd never make her suffer.

But it remains to be seen whether, to make such a promise come true, I'd need to get closer to her or further away.

26 September

Today I finally told Maïmoun what made me undertake this journey, and asked him to tell me, with all the frankness due from a friend, what he felt about it. I didn't omit anything, either the pilgrim from Moscow, the book by Mazandarani, the number of the Beast, Boumeh's bad behaviour, or old Idriss's death. I needed help from Maïmoun's jeweller's eye, used to telling the difference between true and false brilliance. But he only answered my questions with others, and added his anxieties, or at least those of his family, to my own.

At first he listened to me in silence. While nothing I said seemed to surprise him, he became increasingly thoughtful, even downcast, with every sentence. When I'd finished he took both my hands in his.

“You have spoken to me like a brother,” he said. “Now it's my turn to open my heart to you. My reasons for embarking on this journey are not all that different from yours. I, too, came because of these wretched rumours. I came reluctantly, exclaiming against credulity, superstition and all the computations and so-called ‘signs' — but I came all the same. I had no choice. If I hadn't come my father would have died. You and I are both victims of the madness of our nearest and dearest.”

Maïmoun's father, an assiduous reader of sacred texts, has long believed the end of the world to be at hand. According to him it is clearly written in the Zohar, the book of the cabalists, that in the year 5408 those who are resting in the dust will rise up. In the Jewish calendar, that year corresponds to our 1648.

“But that was seventeen years ago, and the Resurrection didn't take place. Despite all the prayer and fasting, despite all the privations my father imposed on my mother, my sisters and me — which we accepted with enthusiasm at the time — nothing happened. Since then I've lost all my illusions. I go to the synagogue when I must, so as to feel close to my family and friends. I laugh with them and cry with them on the appropriate occasions, so as not to seem unsympathetic to their joys and sorrows. But I don't expect anything or anyone any more. Unlike my father, who is none the wiser. He wouldn't dream of admitting that the year foretold by the Zohar was just an ordinary year. He's sure something happened then that we didn't hear of, but that will one day be revealed to us and to the world as a whole.”

Ever since, Maïmoun's father does nothing but search for signs, especially those concerning 1648, the year of disappointed hopes. As a matter of fact, some important things did happen then — but has there ever been any year in which no important things happened?

“‘In the old days,' my father says, ‘there was always a period of respite between one calamity and the next, but since that accursed year disasters have followed one another in an uninterrupted stream. We have never experienced such a succession of woes. Isn't that a sign in itself?'

“One day I lost patience and said to him, ‘Father, I always thought that was supposed to be the year of the Resurrection. That it would put an end to our sufferings, and that we had to look forward to it with joy and hope!' He answered: ‘These pains are just birth-pangs; this blood is the blood that goes with deliverance!'

“So for seventeen years my father has been on the look-out for signs. But not always with the same degree of enthusiasm. Sometimes he'd let months go by without mentioning them once, then something would happen — some trouble in the family, or plague, famine or a visit from an important person — and it would all start up again. These last few years, although he's had serious health problems, he's only referred to the Resurrection as a distant hope. But a few months ago he started to get agitated again. The rumours circulating among the Christians about the imminent end of the world have completely upset him. Our community never stops discussing what is going and what is not going to happen, what we should be dreading and what we should be hoping for. Every time a rabbi from Damascus, Jerusalem or Tiberias, Egypt, Gaza or Smyrna passes through Aleppo, everyone crowds round him in a frenzy to find out what he knows or predicts.

“And so, a few weeks back, tired of hearing so many contradictory opinions, my father got it into his head to go to Constantinople to seek the opinion of an ancient hakim originating, like us, from Toledo. He is the only person who knows the truth, according to my father. ‘If he tells me the hour is come, I'll leave everything and spend all my time in prayer and meditation; if he tells me the hour is not come, I'll go back to my ordinary life.'

“There could be no question of letting him travel the roads — he's more than seventy years old and can scarcely stand upright — so I decided I'd go and see the rabbi in Constantinople, to put to him all the questions my father would like to ask and come back with the answers.

“So that's how I come to be in this caravan — like you, because of these crazy rumours. Though neither of us can help laughing, deep down inside, at people's gullibility.”

It's very kind of Maïmoun to compare my attitude with his. They're only superficially alike. He took to the road out of filial piety, without changing his own convictions; whereas I let myself be influenced by the folly around me. But I didn't say so: why belittle myself in the eyes of someone I respect? And why should I stress the differences between us when he is always pointing out the similarities?

27 September

Today's stage of the journey will have been less arduous than the preceding ones. After four days on the steep paths of the Taurus mountains, with stretches that are often narrow and dangerous, we reached the Anatolian plain. And after ill-kept khans, infested with rough janissaries — who were theoretically supposed to protect us from highwaymen, but whose looks were in fact so far from reassuring that we shut ourselves up in our quarters — we had the good fortune to come upon a respectable inn, patronised by travelling merchants.

The innkeeper soon took the shine off our satisfaction, however, when he told us of rumours reaching here from Konya, according to which the town has been struck by the plague, and its gates closed to all travellers.

Disturbing as these tidings were, they had the advantage of bringing me close to the rest of my party, who gathered round waiting for me to decide what to do. Some other travellers had already chosen to turn back at dawn without more ado. Admittedly they had joined us only at Tarsus, or Alexandretta at most. We, who come from Gibelet and are already more than halfway, can't just give in at the first alarm.

The caravaneer suggests going on a bit further and changing our route later on if circumstances require it. I still find him as unattractive as I did when I first set eyes on him, but that seems to me a sensible idea. So on we go, and the grace of God be with us!

28 September

Today I said some things to Maïmoun that he thought significant, so perhaps I should write them down.

He had just observed that people nowadays can be divided up into those who believe that the end of the world is at hand, and those who are sceptical — he and I being among the latter. I answered that in my opinion people can also be divided up into those who fear the end of the world and those who wish for it — the former thinking of flood and disaster, the latter of resurrection and deliverance.