The Nonexistent Knight (12 page)

“Why?”

“Why...?” and his longing to proclaim his secret was stronger than his fear of committing sacrilege. “Because I’m your son!”

The old knight remained impassive. “Here neither fathers nor sons are acknowledged,” said he after a moment of silence. “Whoever enters the Sacred Order leaves behind him all earthly relationships.”

Torrismund felt more disappointed than repudiated. He would have preferred an angry reply from his chaste fathers, which he could have contradicted or argued with by giving proofs and invoking their common blood, but this calm reply, which did not deny the possibility of the facts but excluded all discussion on a matter of principle, was discouraging.

“My sole other aspiration is to be recognized as a son of the Sacred Order,” he tried to insist, “for which I bear a limitless admiration.”

“If you admire our Order so much,” said the old man, “you should have one sole aspiration, to be admitted as part of it”

“Would that be possible, d’you think?” exclaimed Torrismund, immediately attracted by the new pospect.

“When you have made yourself worthy.”

“What must one do?”

“Purify oneself gradually from every passion and let oneself be possessed by love of the Grail.”

“Oh, you
do
pronounce that name then?”

“We knights can; you profane, no.”

“But tell me, why are all here silent and you the only one to talk?”

“I am charged with the duty of relations with the profane. Words being often impure, the Knights prefer to abstain from them, and also to let the Grail speak through their lips.”

“Tell me what must I do to begin?”

“D’you see that maple leaf? A drop of dew has formed on it. Try and stand quite still and stare at the drop on that leaf, identify yourself with it, forget all the world in that drop, until you feel you have lost yourself and are pervaded by the infinite strength of the Grail.”

And he left him. Torrismund stared fixedly at the drop, stared and stared, began thinking of his own affairs, saw a frog jumping on the leaf, stared and stared at the frog, and then at the drop again, moved a foot which had gone numb, and then suddenly felt bored. In the woods knights appeared and disappeared, moving very slowly, their mouths open and eyes staring, accompanied by swans whose soft plumage they caressed every now and again. One suddenly threw wide his arms and with a hoarse cry broke into a little run.

“That one over there,” Torrismund could not prevent himself from asking the old man, who had reappeared nearby, “what’s up with him?”

“Ecstasy!” said the old man. “That is something you will never know, who are so distracted and curious. Those brothers have finally reached complete communion with the all.”

“And what about those?” asked the youth. Some knights were swaying about as if taken by slight shivers, and yawning.

“They’re still at an intermediate stage. Before feeling one with the sun and stars the novice feels as if he has the nearest objects within himself, very intensely. This has an effect, particularly on the youngest. Those brothers of ours whom you see are feeling a pleasant gentle tickle from the running brook, the rustling leaves, the mushrooms growing underground.”

“And don’t they tire of it in the long run?”

“Gradually they reach the higher states in which the nearest vibrations no longer occupy them but the great sweep of the skies, and very slowly they detach themselves from the senses.”

“Does that happen to all?”

“To few. And completely, only to one of us, the Elect, the King of the Grail.”

They had reached a glade where a large number of knights were exercising their arms before a canopied tribunal. Under that canopy was sitting or rather crouching, motionless, someone who seemed to be more mummy than man, dressed too in the uniform of the Grail, but more sumptuously. His eyes were open, indeed staring, in a face dried up as a chestnut.

“Is he alive?” asked the youth.

“He’s alive, but now he’s so rapt by love of the Grail that he no longer needs to eat or move or do his daily needs, or scarcely to breathe. He neither feels nor sees. No one knows his thoughts; they certainly reflect the movements of distant planets.”

“But why do they make him preside over military parades, if he doesn’t see?”

“’Tis a rite of the Grail.”

The knights were fencing among themselves. They were moving their swords in jerks, looking into the void, and taking sharp sudden steps as if they could never foresee what they would do a second later. And yet they never missed a blow.

“How can they fight with that air of being half asleep?”

“ ’Tis the Grail in us moving our swords. Love of the universe can take the form of great frenzy and urge us lovingly to pierce our enemies. Our Order is invincible in war just because we fight without making any effort or choice but letting the sacred frenzy flow through our bodies.”

“And does it always turn out all right?”

“‘Yes, with whoever has lost all residues of human will and only lets the Grail direct his slightest gesture.”

“Slightest gesture? Even now when you’re walking?”

The old man was walking like a somnambulist. “Certainly. It’s not I who am moving my feet. I am letting them be moved. Try. ’Tis the start of all.”

Torrismund tried, but first he just could not succeed, and secondly he did not enjoy it There were the woods, green and leafy, all fluttering and achirp, where he longed to run and let himself go and put up game, to pit himself, his strength, his effort, his courage against that shadow, that mystery, that extraneous nature. Instead of which he had to stand there swaying like a paralytic.

“Let yourself be possessed,” the old man was warning him, “let yourself be possessed entirely.”

“But really, you know,” burst out Torrismund, “what I long for is to possess, not be possessed.” The old man crossed his elbows over his face so as to stop up eyes and ears. “You still have a long way to go, my boy.”

Torrismund remained in the encampment of the Grail. He tried hard to leam and imitate his fathers or brothers (he didn’t know which to call them), tried to suffocate every motion of the mind which seemed too individual, to fuse himself in communion with the infinite love of the Grail, attentive for any indication of those ineffable sensations which sent the knights into ecstasies. But days passed and his purification made no progress. Everything they most liked bored him utterly: those voices, that music, their constant aptness to vibrate. And above all the continual proximity of the brethren, dressed like that, half naked, with golden breastplates and helmets, and very white flesh, some old, others fussy, touchy youths, all became more and more antipathetic to him. With their story about the Grail always moving them, they indulged in all sorts of loose habits while pretending to be ever pure.

The thought that he could have been generated like that, by people with eyes staring into the void without even thinking of what they were doing, forgetting right away, he found quite unbearable.

The day came for handing over tribute. All the villagers around the wood, in carefully arranged order, were to hand over to the Knights of the Grail a certain number of goats’ cheeses, baskets of carrots, sacks of millet and young lambs.

A delegation of peasants advanced. “We wish to put forward the fact that the year has been a very bad one over the whole land of Koowalden. We are at our wits’ end even to feed our children. Famine touches rich and poor. Pious Knights, we have come humbly to ask you to forgo our tribute just this time.”

The King of the Grail, under the canopy, sat silent and still as ever. But at a certain moment; slowly, he unjoined his hands, which he had crossed over his stomach, raised them to the sky (he had very long nails), and from his mouth came, “Iiiih...”

At that sound all the Knights advanced with set lances towards the poor peasants. “Help! Let’s defend ourselves!” they cried. “We’ll hurry off and arm ourselves with axes and pitchforks!” and they dispersed.

The Knights, their eyes turned to the sky, marched to the sound of horns and timbrels. From hop rows and bushes leapt villagers armed with pitchforks and billhooks, trying to contest their passage. But they could do little against the Knights’ inexorable lances. Breaking their scattered defenses, the knights flung their heavy chargers against the huts of stone and straw and mud, grinding them under hooves, deaf to the shout of women, calves, children. Other Knights bore lit torches and set fire to roofs, haystacks, stalls and a few poor granaries, until the villages were reduced to crackling bonfires.

Torrismund, in the wake of the Knights, was horrified.

“Why, tell me, why?” he cried to the old man, keeping behind him as the only one who could listen to him. “So it’s not true you are pervaded by love of all! Hey, be careful, you’re running down that old woman! How have you the hearts to attack these poor folk? Help, the flames are licking that cradle! What're you doing?”

“Do not scrutinize the designs of the Grail, novice!” warned the old man. “We are here but for this: ’tis the Grail moving us! Abandon yourself to its burning love.”

But Torrismund had dismounted, rushed to the help of a mother and gave her back a fallen baby.

“No! Don’t take my crop! I’ve worked so hard for it!” yelled an old man.

Torrismund was beside him. “Drop that sack, you brigand!” and he rushed at a Knight and tore the bag from him.

“Blessings on you! Stay with us!” cried some of the poor wretches, trying with pitchforks and knives to defend themselves behind a wall.

“Get into a semicircle, and we’ll attack 'em together,” shouted Torrismund at them, and so put himself at the head of the local militia.

Now he ejected the Knights from the houses. At one moment he found himself face to face with the old Knight and another two armed with torches. “He’s a traitor, take him!”

A fierce struggle rose. The locals used spits, and their women and children stones. Suddenly a horn sounded “Retreat!” Before the peasant counterattack the Knights had fallen back at many points and were now clearing out of the village.

The group pressing Torrismund hard retired too. “Away brothers!” shouted the old man. “Let us be led where the Grail takes us.”

“The Grail will triumph,” chorused the others, turning their bridles.

“Hurrah! You’ve saved us!” The peasants crowded round Torrismund. “You’re a knight, but you're generous! At last one who is! Stay with us! Tell us what you want; we’ll give it to you.”

“Well ... what I want ... Now I don’t know,” stuttered Torrismund.

“We knew nothing either, even if we were human, before this battle.... And now we seem to be able ... to want ... to need to do things ... however difficult...” and they turned to mourn their dead.

“I can’t stay with you ... I don't know who I am ... Farewell!” and away he galloped.

“Come back!” cried the peasants, but Torrismund was already far from the village, from the wood of the Grail, from Koowalden.

Again he began his wandering among nations. Till now he had despised every honor and pleasure, his sole ideal being the Sacred Order of the Knights of the Grail. And now that ideal had vanished. To what aim could he set his disquiet?

He fed on wild fruit in the woods, on bean soup in monasteries he found on the way, on shellfish along rocky coasts. And on the shores of Brittany, seeking for shellfish in a cave, what should he find but a sleeping woman.

The restlessness which had moved him over the world, to places of soft velvety vegetation swept by low searing wind, into tense sunless days, now, at the sight of those long black lashes lowered over full pale cheeks, and that tender relaxed body, and the hand on the full-formed bosom, the soft loose hair, the lip, the hip, the toe, the breath, finally seemed assuaged.

He was leaning over her, looking, when Sophronia opened her eyes. “You’ll do me no harm,” she said gently, “what do you seek for amid these deserted rocks?”

“I seek something which I have always lacked and only now that I see you do I know what it is. How did you reach this shore?”

“Though a nun, I was forced to many a follower of Mohammed but the nuptials were never consummated as I was the three hundred and sixty-fifth wife and Christian arms intervened. Because I was a victim of ferocious pirates and was forced to abandon ship, I was brought here.”

“I understand. And are you alone?”

“My deliverer has gone to the Imperial camp to make certain arrangements, as far as I understand.”

“I yearn to offer the protection of my sword, but fear that the emotion firing me at sight of you may turn to suggestions which you might not consider honest.”

“Oh, have no scruples, you know, I’ve seen so much. Though every time, just at the very moment, arrives that deliverer, always the same one.”

“Will he arrive this time too?”

“Oh well, one never knows.”

“What is your name?”

“Azira or Sister Palmyra according to whether I’m in a Sultan’s harem or a convent.”

“Azira, I seem always to have loved you ... already to have lost myself in you...”

11

CHARLEMAGNE was prancing along towards the coast of Brittany. “We’ll soon see, we’ll soon see, Agilulf of the Guildivern, calm yourself. If what you tell me is true, if this woman still bears the same virginity as she had fifteen years ago, then there’s no more to be said, and you have been an armed knight by full right, and that young man was just trying to deceive us. To make certain I have brought along in our suite an old woman who’s an expert in such matters. We soldiers haven’t quite got the touch for these things, eh ...”

The old midwife, on the crupper of Gurduloo’s saddle, was twittering away, “Yes, yes, Majesty, I’ll be most careful, even if it’s twins...” She was deaf and had not yet understood what it was all about.

Into the grotto first went two officers of the suite, bearing torches. They returned in some confusion. “Sire, the virgin is lying in the embrace of a young soldier.”

The lovers were brought before the emperor.

“You, Sophronia!” cried Agilulf.

Charlemagne had the young man’s face raised. “Torrismund!”