Pilgermann (14 page)

So it was that when that red sail appeared three days out I nodded with a sense of the fitness of things. Clearly such a ship as that
Balena,
such a master as that one, and such a crew as that crew had never been meant, in the general design of things, to move a load of pilgrims from an unholy to a Holy Land. There were about fifty pilgrims on board, and when some of the more experienced ones said that they thought the fast-moving red sail might be pirates we all asked the master for weapons with which to defend ourselves and the ship. ‘Softly, softly, good sirs,’ he said. ‘Be tranquil, there’s no use pissing into the wind.’ The crew then produced swords, pikes, and clubs and herded us into the after part of the ship where we watched the red sail growing ever larger until the pirates closed with us, lines were thrown from them to us, and the two ships linked arms like strolling sweethearts.

The pirate captain then came aboard without much ostentation but it was clear that he was accustomed to being treated with respect. He was a tall lean Muslim and as he stood facing the short fat Christian master of our vessel he seemed to embody some necessary complementarity; together they were obviously spin-maintainers. The two of them exchanged greetings with great civility and then began to haggle spiritedly in Arabic. We pilgrims naturally watched and listened with some interest, and it seemed to us that the master of the
Balena
was saying that we were very valuable while the pirate captain thought perhaps that we were not so very valuable. The negotiations concluded, money changed hands and we pilgrims
changed ships. As we stepped over into the pirate vessel the pilgrim just ahead of me turned to me and said, ‘What’s the name of this ship, did you notice?’

‘Nineveh,’
I said, pleased with my own joke; I had noticed the name but could not read the Arabic characters. But later I asked a Greek-speaking pirate what the name was.

‘Nineveh,’
he said.

To be sold for a slave is a startling experience. The rest of the world knows so little about one and yet it is they who set the price. We were all stripped and examined and relieved of our luggage and whatever was in our pockets or sewn into our clothes. The pirate captain was delighted to find that I was a eunuch in good condition; he made that gesture of kissing the fingers made by all vendors who reckon that they have something especially fine to sell. In the slave market in Tripoli, standing in the cool and coloured shade of awnings, smelling the smoke of water pipes and a variety of Middle Eastern cooking that invited one to abandon introspection and embrace such pleasures of the senses as now offered, hearing Arabic, Syriac, Armenian, Turkish, and Greek spoken all round me I was not so distressed as one might think; it had never before happened to me that I was valued, and highly valued, for my visible qualities alone. It occurred to me that I might be bought for harem duty and I felt a little stir of pleasure; orchards are pleasant even if one can’t climb the trees.

A succession of prospective buyers stood before me and tilted their heads to one side, trying, I suppose, to imagine me in their houses as one imagines a table or a chair or a wall hanging. Would I go with the rest of it. A variety of people-buying faces looked at me from under turbans, fezzes, and kaffiyas. The pirate captain found many things to say about me, none of which I understood because he spoke in Arabic. He was at pains to show interested viewers that I had good teeth and he seemed particularly pleased by the arch of my foot, drawing attention to it frequently. In my mind I saw myself standing hour after hour outside the closed doors of a harem listening to laughter and low murmurings while little by little my feet grew flat.

There was standing before me a tall and noble-looking Turk
with heroic moustaches, a red fez, a scarlet and purple jacket worked with gold. I judged him to be sixty or so. He put a large hand on my shoulder and drew me a few steps away from the others. He looked at me in such a way that I knew he was going to say something that would make me his friend. He said to me in Greek, ‘What if I say to you that the universe is a three-legged horse, eh? What then? What will you say to me?’

I said to him, ‘It is because the universe is a three-legged horse that the journey to the red heifer is so slow.’

‘Ah!’ he said, ‘You’re a Jew then.’

‘How does that follow?’ I said.

‘A Jew will consider anything,’ he said. ‘Are you or aren’t you?’

‘I am,’ I said.

‘I need you,’ he said. ‘Do you need me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Done!’ he said. My price was twenty-five dinars but he counted out fifty gold dinars and gave them to the pirate captain.

‘This is twice as much as I have asked,’ said the pirate captain in Greek to the Turk. This pirate’s name, by the way, was Prodigality. He had formerly been a slave named Thrift who had in trading for his merchant master put by enough money to buy his freedom, and having done so he changed his name and went into piracy. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he said to the Turk.

‘I am afraid not to,’ said my new owner. ‘I want Allah to take notice that I am taking notice of my good fortune.’

‘If Allah’s taking notice I don’t want to look bad,’ said Prodigality, and counting out twenty-five dinars he put them into my hand.

Both men looked at me with expectation.

‘Can I buy myself back?’ I said to my new owner.

‘Just as you like,’ he said. Prodigality wrote out a bill of sale to him and he wrote out a bill of sale to me. I then gave him the gold that Prodigality had given me.

‘Now you’re a free man,’ said my former owner. ‘What will you do?’

‘I’ll come with you freely,’ I said, ‘as we need each other.’

‘Thus does the will of Allah manifest itself in human transactions,’ said my new friend.

‘Wait!’ said Prodigality as we turned to go, and taking my hand he put into it the remaining twenty-five dinars of the double payment.

‘What’s this?’ I said.

‘Allah wills what Allah wills,’ said Prodigality. ‘Let it be altogether circular.’

‘I am obedient to the will of Allah,’ I said, and put the gold back into the hand from which it had originally come.

‘Let it be noticed by all who have eyes to see,’ said my new friend as he received the gold, ‘that Allah
has
taken notice.’

‘It’s a pleasure doing business with you,’ said Prodigality. ‘It’s spiritually refreshing. It’s only a pity I can’t afford this sort of thing more often.’

With many expressions of mutual esteem we parted, and as I walked away with my former owner and new friend I marvelled at how Prodigality had been able to rise above the practical considerations of commerce. Certainly with my gold and diamonds and the plunder from the other pilgrims in his coffers he could afford to be generous but even so it seemed remarkable to me that gold and silver and gems could produce in him that degree of moral sensitivity that enabled him to behave so handsomely.

My new friend’s name was Bembel Rudzuk; he was a wealthy merchant who lived in Antioch. I went with him to the khan where he and his party were staying, and the next morning we departed for Suwaydiyya on one of his dhows. ‘How strange that was yesterday!’ I said to him. ‘How extraordinary!’

‘Now more than other things,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘To me everything is extraordinary and nothing is. Aeschylus was killed when he was hit on the head by a tortoise dropped by an eagle but that’s not extraordinary when you consider that he was sitting directly below the eagle when it dropped the tortoise from a considerable height. On the other hand, that there
was
Aeschylus,
that
to me is extraordinary: that the world appeared in his eyes, that the world lived in him like the light in a lantern, that there are continually new lanterns for the world to live in, that you and I are two of them, yes, that to me is extraordinary.’

‘That the universe should be a three-legged horse,’ I said, ‘is that extraordinary, do you think?’

‘I don’t know what to think about that,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘Although I said those words and know them to be true I have no idea what they signify. They came into my head when I first saw you yesterday. Perhaps they signify that for us our meeting is the fourth leg. What colour is the horse for you?’

‘Red,’ I said, ‘like the heifer.’

‘For me also it is red,’ he said.

‘Why do you need a Jew?’ I said.

‘Do you know that story of Abraham that is not to be found in the Holy Scriptures?’ he said. ‘How Nimrod put him into the fiery furnace and God took him out?’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I know that story.’

‘Do you perceive,’ he said, ‘that there is alchemy in this story?’

‘Ah!’ I said. ‘He was put into the furnace, he was taken out again.’

‘He will go in again,’ said Bembel Rudzuk.

‘I believe you,’ I said. ‘And when will his base metal be transmuted to gold, how long will that take?’

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘It’s the metal of those who put him into the fire that must be transmuted.’

‘Are there years enough for that?’ I said.

‘Whether there are or there aren’t,’ he said, ‘that’s nothing I can do anything about. But I’m curious about Abraham. Have you heard of the sulphur-mercury process?’

‘I think I’ve seen diagrams of two triangles point to point,’ I said.

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘In the diagrams one sees them point to point—the sulphur triangle with its hotness and dryness, the mercury triangle with its coldness and wetness. Look!’ He flung out his arm towards the sea where the sun-points danced. ‘The hot and dry is dancing on the cold and wet; in everything can we see these combinations working. These two triangles that we see in the diagrams, they want to mingle their natures as they did in that veiled story in which the cold and wet of Abraham’s water-nature was activated to neutralize the hot and dry of his fire-nature. Abraham, you know, is claimed by Jews and Arabs both. I myself believe that in this story he personifies the elemental complementarity that moves the universe. It is in
the Holy Scriptures of your people that Abraham is first written of, and for this reason I want to avail myself of the action of your mind.’

‘How?’ I said.

‘There is a work that I have been thinking about for some time,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to talk about it quite yet.’

‘Are you an alchemist?’ I said.

‘You mean with pots and furnaces?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘No,’ he said. ‘That to me is greedy, it is a sweating after something to hold in the hand and look at, it is not a true giving, it is not an honest offering of the self to the Unity from which all multiplicity comes.’

‘But your two triangles,’ I said, ‘your sulphur-mercury process?’

‘Look!’ he said again. The crew were wearing the vessel round before the wind. The helmsman put the tiller over to bring the wind aft, the great triangle of the mainsail was let fly, the old windward shrouds were eased off and the new windward shrouds set up as we came about; the mainsail was sheeted home again and we filled away on the new tack. ‘Wind alchemy,’ said Bembel Rudzuk. ‘The triangle of the sail fills first on one side then on the other to drive us forward. Two triangles. My alchemy seeks no yellow metal; it is a continual offering to the Unity at the heart of the multiplicity. It makes no distinction between what is called something and what is called nothing, it knows such words to be without meaning.’ The sail swelled as if with the breath of God, the dhow pitched forward and reared back as if nodding in agreement with the words of Bembel Rudzuk, the sun-points danced on the water, the dark crew, some in white and some in faded colours, ranged themselves along the windward rail. I felt such a Nowness in the light of the day that Christ leapt into my mind like the visual echo of his unheard voice. ‘Ah!’ I said, ‘This, this, this!’ He was gone, there were only the sun-points on the water, the breath of God in the sail.

‘Yes,’ said Bembel Rudzuk, ‘you see!’

We made our way up the coast in short stages, calling at Tortosa, Marquiya, Baniyas, and Ladhiqiyya to discharge and
take on a variety of cargoes. Each port in the changing lights of the day would grow smoothly and mysteriously larger and more detailed in the eye as we approached: first the massed groupings of light and shadow of the moored vessels, the low waterside buildings, the domes and minarets of the town behind; then the slow shifting of the grouped lights and shadows into separate and varied lights and shadows growing larger, more clear, becoming individually defined masts and sails and rigging, painted boats rocking at their moorings, figures aboard them standing and moving, faces looking across the green and sheltered, the shining and the shadowed water above which drifted the smells of cooking, the smoke of charcoal fires against a background of warehouse roofs and windows and open doors, cordage and tackle, bales, barrels, carts and wagons of the waterside. And always in front of this the motion of vessels arriving, vessels departing, and aboard these vessels faces passing, passing, locked in unknownness, growing smaller, becoming unseen.

Although our business in Ladhiqiyya was finished early in the evening we did not leave until much later; Suwaydiyya was only three or four hours away and Bembel Rudzuk wanted to arrive with the dawn rather than in the middle of the night. ‘Dawn is the best time for coming into port,’ he said, ‘and I always allow myself this pleasure when coming home.’

The feeble lamp-glimmers of the coast shifted subtly in our passing and were swallowed in obscurity. I looked up at the sky but the Virgin and the Lion were not to be seen, there were no stars, the night was opaque; this was already November and the rainy season. ‘Would the Virgin and the Lion be visible if the sky were clear?’ I asked Bembel Rudzuk.

‘No,’ he said, ‘they are below the horizon now.’

Towards morning it began to rain, and it was in the grey rainlight that Suwaydiyya offered to us the shapes of dawn all dark and huddled, the low waterside buildings curtained with rain, the water of the harbour leaping up in points to meet the downpour, the dawn boats rocking to the morning slap of the water on their sides, furled sails wet with dawn and rain and still heavy with night, crews sheltering under awnings, the smoke of their breakfast fires ghostly in the rain. And as always all of it,
the whole picture in the eyes, had without seeming to come closer grown smoothly bigger in that particular way in which things reveal themselves when approached by sea, opening to the approacher more and more detail, more and more imminence of what is to come. And always, thus approaching, one feels the new day, the new place, coming forward to read the face of the approacher. Always the held breath, the questioning look of the grey morning, the seclusion of the rain.