Mika Waltari - The Wanderer

I was therefore filled with a burning desire to go ashore and contemplate the relics of a former age, and discover whether indeed there were any grounds for the tales the ancient Greeks had told. And when I had related to Giulia all I could remember of Aphrodite’s birth, Paris’s golden apple, and Helen’s unlawful love, I found no difficulty in persuading her to accompany me. Her curiosity was, if possible, more intense than my own thirst for knowledge.

Seamen rowed the four of us ashore, and I bought a basket filled with new bread, dried meat, figs, and goat’s cheese. I could understand little of the villagers’ dialect, but when a goatherd showed me a path, pointed to the top of a hill, and constantly repeated the word palaio- polis, I knew that he was showing us the way to an ancient city. We walked uphill beside a stream until we came to a quiet reach where in ancient days many bathing pools had been built. Although the stones were weatherworn and stiff grass grew in the cracks, I could count a dozen of these pools; after a ten days’ voyage and a warm climb we could have beheld no pleasanter or more welcome sight. Andy and I plunged in at once, and washed ourselves clean with the fine sand; the two ladies also undressed and bathed in another pool behind a screen of bushes. I heard Giulia splashing and laughing with delight.

With the soft breeze murmuring through shiny green laurel leaves and Giulia’s laughter ringing in my ears, my fancy peopled these pools with the nymphs and fauns of legend, and I should have felt no surprise if the goddess Aphrodite herself, in all her glory, had stepped toward me from the thicket.

When we had eaten, Andy remarked that he felt drowsy, and Johanna too, after a hostile glance at the rocky crag and the dense pine forests on its slopes, began to bewail her swollen feet.

So Giulia and I set forth alone together on an arduous climb to the summit. We found there two marble columns whose capitals had fallen to the ground and been buried under sand and grass. Behind them stood the bases of many square pillars and the ruins of a temple doorway. Among the ruins of the temple itself a larger-than-life-size statue of a goddess stood on a marble pedestal. She gazed upon us in regal beauty, her limbs covered by the thinnest of veils. The temple had fallen in ruins about her, but still in her divine loveliness she surveyed us mortals, though one thousand, five hundred and twenty-seven years had passed since our Saviour’s birth.

But I was thinking neither of my Saviour nor of the excellent resolutions that had moved me to undertake my long journey. I seemed transported into the golden, pagan age when men knew neither the thorns of doubt nor the anguish of sin; in the face of this potent spell I should have done well to flee. I know I should have fled, but I did not. I did not, and more swiftly than I can write the words we had lain down to rest in the warm grass. I caught Giulia in my arms and besought her to uncover her face, so that no chilling estrangement should linger between us. My boldness was encouraged by the conviction that Giulia would not have been so ready to come with me to this lonely place unless in her heart she had shared my desire. Nor did she resist my lips and hands, but when I would have torn the veil from her face she grasped my wrists with the strength of despair and begged me most movingly to desist.

“Michael, my friend, my beloved, do as I say. I too am young, and we live but once. But I cannot uncover my face for you, for it would part us. Why can you not love me without beholding it, when all my tenderness awaits you?”

But I could not be content. Her resistance made me the more stubborn, so that by force I dragged the veil from her grasp and bared her face. She lay in my embrace with her fair curls over my arm and her dark-lashed eyes tightly closed. Her lips were like cherries, and my caress had brought a warm glow to her cheeks. I was at a loss to imagine why she had so long and so tantalizingly veiled her features from me, for they were beautiful. But she kept her eyes closed, and covered them with her hands; she was unresponsive to my kisses.

Ah, that I had been content with this! But I urged her wildly to open her eyes. She shook her head violently and all her joy had melted away; she lay in my arms like one dead, and not my most daring caresses could revive her. Dismayed I released her and begged her earnestly to open her eyes and look into mine, that she might read there the intensity of my longing.

At length she said sadly, “Then it’s over between us, Pilgrim Michael, and may this be the last time that I seek love. You’ll soon forget me when our voyage is ended. Let us hope that I shall forget you as easily. For the love of God, Michael, don’t look into my eyes. They are evil.”

I knew of course that there are people who without any malicious intent can injure others with their gaze. My teacher, Doctor Paracelsus, believed that the evil eye could cause a fruit tree to wither. But it was on account of such beliefs that my wife Barbara was beheaded and burned in a German city, although she was relatively innocent. In my despair I rejected all the evidence that had been heaped against her as malice and superstition, and so incurred the guilt of heresy. Nor did I believe now that Giulia’s fair face could be marred by evil eyes, and I laughed. Perhaps my laughter was a little forced, because of her grief, but when I swore that I did not fear her gaze she turned pale and at last withdrew her hands. Her frightened eyes, clear as raindrops, looked into mine.

My blood turned to ice, my heart stopped, and I stared back, as mute and horror stricken as herself.

Her eyes were beautiful indeed, yet they lent a sinister look to her face, for they were of different colors. The left eye was blue as the sea, but the right was nut brown; I had never before seen such a thing-I had never even heard of it-and I sought in vain a natural explanation.

We gazed long at one another, face to face, and instinctively I recoiled and sat a little distance, still gazing, until she too sat up and covered her breast. All warmth had drained from my body and cold shivers ran down my spine; what malignant planets must have presided at my birth! The only woman I had ever loved was beheaded and burned as a witch, and now that another had captured my heart, she too was cursed by God and must veil a face that brought horror and consternation to all beholders. My life was accursed; it might be that within myself there lurked some fatal affinity with what we call witchcraft. I remembered how Giulia’s presence, from the time I first beheld her, had attracted me like a magnet, and I could no longer feel that this was merely youth calling to youth. In my heart I suspected some dread mystery.

I was in no condition to express my thoughts to Giulia, and when she had sat for a little while with bowed head, twisting a grass blade about her slender fingers, she rose and said coldly, “Well, Michael, you’ve had your way and it’s time for us to go.”

She walked away with her head held high, and I leaped up to rejoin her. Without turning she said in a hard voice, “Master Carvajal, I rely upon your honor not to betray my secret to the ignorant people aboard our ship. Although life is indifferent to me, although it might be better for me and my fellows if I died, yet I long to reach the Holy Land now that I have undertaken the pilgrimage. I want no superstitious seaman to throw me overboard.”

I caught her wrists, and turning her to me I said, “Giulia, don’t think that my love for you has died; that is not true. Indeed I feel now that fate intended us for each other, for I too am different from other people, though I bear no outward sign of it.”

But Giulia said in derision, “You’re kind and courteous, Michael, but I don’t need your false words; your eyes have clearly spoken your horror. Let it be as if we had never met, for that is the best and kindest thing you can do.”