Russell Hoban - Pilgermann

And yet, and yet! I have done wrong, O God, I know it. I made that tax-collector poorer when I enjoyed his wife, I know that. Maybe only on her glorious body could he pray, maybe only with her could he be with you, and I came between him and his prayer. But he was holding on then, wasn’t he, being so attached to her, and Jesus said that holding on was no good. No, it’s no use, no matter how I try to squirm out of it I’ve done wrong and reparation must be made. Because I violated that man’s privacy, because I burst in upon his quietness. Not that he was all that good a man, certainly I never knew anyone to have a good word to say for him. Maybe his first good action was saving my life that day, maybe that was the first time he’d ever looked kindly upon a Jew, and it only happened after I’d had his wife. Ah! what’s the use of twisting and turning, there’s something required of me: what? What should I do, where should I go? ‘Jerusalem! Thou pilgrim Jew!’ I did not speak those words, it was a voice that spoke within me: not so much a voice as the daughter of a voice, what is called in Hebrew a Bath Kol. There was about it the scent of Sophia’s voice but I knew that it was expressing God’s intention. ‘Jerusalem! Thou pilgrim Jew!’

I, a pilgrim! To Jerusalem! This thought entered me, I could already feel the road under my feet. A name, a word, has substance; the word Jerusalem colours the air. Yerushalayim! I say it, and I that have no face, I feel where there used to be a face, I feel that sharp sensation in the nasal passages, the ache in the throat as the tears start into the eyes of that face I no longer have. Yerushalayim! Flesh made word, soul made word, world made word. Yerushalayim! What longings come to a point in that name! Spin, world; be born, people, and die whoring after false gods, shrinking from the one true one. Speak, prophets, and be stoned by the unhearing. Yerushalayim; spinning domes of gold in the sea of the one mind that is God. Ineffable.

Knights in mail, peasants with billhooks were going to Jerusalem. What were the pictures, what were the words in their minds? I could feel the pull as one who stands at the water’s edge feels the sea pulling at his feet. The figure of Christ loomed gigantic in my mind, a figure of gold at the heart of a black mountain. The word, the name of Jerusalem revolving in my mind sent out its glints of gold, and my mind revolving with it found a thread of gold spun out into my road away that beckoned me.

Now I knew what Jesus had meant when he said, ‘After me it’s the straight action and no more dressing up.’ God was already gone from us. How much longer would Jesus be with us? If others had done as I had done the time might not be long. There came to me the thought that the world is full of mysterious, unseen, fragile temples; it was in these many temples that God used to dwell among us; they are easily destroyed, these temples, as I had destroyed the temple of the tax-collector’s privacy in his wife. How many of them still remained? How many temples between us and Christ’s last day, between us and the eternal faceless action of God as It? Quickly, quickly must something be done before all the temples were gone. Now I understood why everyone was rushing to Jerusalem, now I knew why this was a time unique in history: this was the time when people everywhere had all at once had the same thought that I had just had. Perhaps even the Bath Kol had spoken to each of them as it had spoken to me, and all of us were now hurrying to Jerusalem to make with the gathered power of our hearts’ desire a church of all souls craving Jesus, a place of rebirth in the place of holy sepulchre and resurrection. True, it was a pope who had first called for this great going of multitudes to Jerusalem but no pope could have moved so many people had not God truly willed it. I determined to begin my pilgrimage as soon as I was strong enough, and when my wound had healed sufficiently I began to walk a little every day to get my strength back.

When I came out once more into the streets I saw everything very small, very sharp. How impossibly small was the blackened stump of the synagogue! How could even one whole Jew have fitted into it! Sometimes all the spaces where I walked seemed empty and I felt left behind, like horse dung on the cobbles. Many of the shops in the Jewish quarter had shut down; the butcher had become a vegetarian, the bookseller had been burnt to the ground. There were not many Jews to be seen; those who remained looked at one another with faces full of shame as if they had been caught in the practice of an unspeakable vice. Everyone wondered what was coming next, or rather when and in what manner would come that same thing that always came.

It was at this time that the Jewish population of the town were astonished — astonished is too weak a word, they were absolutely knocked over — by the appearance in the Jewish quarter of the tax-collector in a long coarse tunic, a scrip hanging from his shoulder and a staff in his hand. Nobody could believe it: the Jews were not called to assemble at the Town Hall to hear his words; he came alone and on foot and humbly asked the Rabbi (the son-in-law of our old Rabbi who had been killed by the sow-led peasants) whether we would be kind enough to come with him to the ruin of the synagogue where, under the open sky and in the plain sight of God, he had a few words he wished to say to us.

To me it was like something in a dream or like something seen in another life. His face as he spoke was no longer closed to us and hard, it was open and trusting. For the first time he looked at us as one looks at other human beings. As he spoke his hand kept straying to his throat. ‘Townspeople,’ he said, ‘friends, if I may call you that although until now I have never been a friend to you, I am here to say that I am truly sorry for any harm that I have done you. The candle tax is hereby abolished and the inspection and stamp of approval for circumcision knives will no longer be required. Any words of mine that may have injured you I take back with my whole heart and I ask God’s forgiveness and yours; I have already retracted those words publicly at the Town Hall. I am leaving you now to go on a penitential pilgrimage to Jerusalem. I will pray for you and I hope that you can find it in your hearts to pray for me. Goodbye and fare you well, may God be with you and keep you from all harm.’

Having said those words the pilgrim tax-collector departed as he had arrived, humbly and on foot. All of us were deeply moved and deeply grateful, and yet even while the figure of our new friend was receding humbly in the distance there appeared almost visible question marks in the air over our heads; and in front of the question marks there were questions: What? Why? How? What had brought about this sudden change of heart in a man who had until now been solidly convinced of the rightness of oppressing Jews? Why did he suddenly feel guilty for what he had done over the years? Or was there something new for him to feel guilty about? I saw again his pale face looking down at me as I lay on the cobblestones. He had come so close on the heels of those peasants with the sow; if only he had arrived a little sooner! Perhaps when he saw what they had done … but with that thought still unfinished there came another thought: what if he had brought them to our town? Those had not been peasants anyone had seen before on market days nor had there been any word, in the days before their arrival, of armed peasants moving towards us.

Yes, that was undoubtedly what had happened: the tax-collector had brought the peasants to our town and then, seeing what they had done, was overcome with remorse. And I had been reproaching myself for destroying the temple of that man’s privacy with his wife! Ah! if only I could do it again and again and again! My guilt leapt from my shoulders, there surged up in me the virtue, the power, the innocence of the injured party.