At Mount Athos a monk had taken my hand and gazed at my palm; he said he wanted to read my fortune. His face was indeed a gypsy’s: black and leathery, with thick goatlike lips and eyes that spit fire.
“I don’t believe in your sorcery,” I told him with a laugh.
“That doesn’t matter,” he answered. “What matters is that I believe.”
He regarded the lines of my hand, its stars, crosses, and wrinkles. After much study he said, “Don’t put your nose in other people’s business. You were not made for action; keep your distance. You cannot struggle with men, not you, because at the very moment you are fighting, you keep thinking that your enemy might be right, and no matter what he does to you after that, you forgive him. Understand?”
“Continue!” I said. I was a little shaken, because I saw that although this monk had never seen me before, he was right.
He regarded my hand carefully once more.
“You are being devoured by many cares; you want a great deal and ask a great many questions. You are eating away your heart. But take my advice and do not be overanxious to find the answer. You must not go out to find it; it will come to find you. Listen to what I say, and rest at ease; it is coming. Let me tell you what my superior once told me: ‘A monk searched all his life for God, and only when he was breathing his last did he realize that God had been searching all the while for him.’”
He bent over my hand again. Then he stared at me with bulging eyes. “You shall become a monk in your old age,” he said. “Do not laugh. You shall become a monk.”
Sometimes a false prophecy can be fulfilled; one must simply believe in it. I recalled that other prophecy uttered by the midwife when I was born and she regarded me in the light: “One day this child will become a bishop!”
Overcome by terror, I shouted, “No, no, I don’t want to become a monk,” and I drew back my hand as though I scented the danger.
I thought I had forgotten the monk’s words after so many years, and then suddenly, on this night, they rose again into my mind. I tried to laugh but could not. The words seemed to have been working on me secretly all that time and pushing me precisely where I did not want to go. It was no longer a laughing matter.
I closed my eyes in order to fall asleep and escape. . . . Suddenly I was a rebel being pursued through the streets of a large city. I was captured, tried, and condemned to death. The executioner took me and made me march in front while he followed behind with the axe over his shoulder. I started to run. “Why are you running?” asked the executioner, who had begun to gasp for breath. “I’m in a hurry,” I answered him, and as I said this, a warm breeze blew and the executioner vanished. It was not an executioner, it was a black cloud and it had scattered. I wanted to continue on but could not. A mountain rose up before me and blocked my path. It was solid rock, all flint, with a large red flag waving at the summit. I said to myself, If I want to go farther, I shall have to climb it. Well then, in God’s name! Crossing myself, I began to ascend. But I was wearing hobnailed boots, and sparks flew as the hobs rubbed against the flint. I climbed and climbed, slipped, fell, regained momentum, climbed some more. And as I came closer and closer to the top, I saw that it was not a flag that waved at the summit, but a flame. I continued the ascent, my eyes riveted to the peak. No, it was not a flame either—I could see it clearly now—it was God. Not God the Father, however, but the other one, terrible Jehovah, and He was waiting for me.
My blood ran cold. For an instant I was ready to turn back, but I felt ashamed. “Onward, it’s too late now to stop,” I whispered to myself. “Aren’t you afraid?” asked a feminine voice inside me. “Yes, I am afraid!” I shouted, so loudly and with such anguish that I awoke.
I sat up in bed. The dream was still sparkling between my eyelashes. I studied it, studied it again, but was unable to find an interpretation. Why a rebel? Why the executioner? Why the flag, the flame, and God? I shook my head. The answer comes when we stop asking the question, I told myself, growing calm. It comes when the question descends from our garrulous brains and invades our hearts and loins.
“O sweet font for he who thirsts. Thou art closed to all who speak, open to all who hold their peace. He who keeps silence, O font, comes, finds Thee, and drinks.” These were age-old, eternal words, and on this day my lips whispered them with gratitude.
A religious procession was passing beneath my window. The air filled with incense and song. Suddenly I felt happy; some secret decision was ripening inside me in the darkness. I still could not see its features, but I had faith.
Getting up, I dressed myself and opened the window. The sky was blazing, the road beneath me overflowing with all kinds of people, all in a hurry. The air reeked of incense, putrescent fruit, and the heavy, repulsive stench of human beings. Balancing a basket of grilled corn on her head, a fat Arab woman hawked her wares in a shrill voice, her teeth flashing brilliantly white in the sunlight. The Jews, with their long greasy sideburns, slunk along the walls of the houses, their hooked noses dripping venom. Catholic, Orthodox and Armenian priests crossed one another’s paths without exchanging greetings. Christ, in their hands, had degenerated to a flag of hate.
I went down to the street and walked about the town. I was viewing everything for the last time and saying goodbye. In a shop window I saw an old engraving of Mount Sinai. Saint Catherine stood in the middle with the royal crown on her head, and to her left and right, glued to her shoulders like a pair of colossal wings, were the two mountains, Sinai and Saint Episteme. In one hand she held a feather; with the other she tenderly stroked the wheel which had been the instrument of her martyrdom. Beneath, written in ancient Greek: “What are ye worth, ye remaining mountains? Why boast that ye are covered with plants, abounding in trees, and thick with milk? One and one only is the serried, massy, pious, thick, holy, honorable, virtuous, pure, heavenly, spiritual, angelic, and divine God-trodden Mount Sinai.”
For a long time I was unable to take my eyes off this engraving. And the more I gazed at it, the more certain I became that if the dream had continued longer, if I had not shouted “I am afraid!” and awoke, the mountain which I was climbing would have become a pair of wings. For this mountain all of flint and sparks was my struggle’s ascending road, and if I reached its limit, the struggle would become wings and I would be united with whatever blazed at the summit, be it a red flag, a flame, or God.
Dreams, childish yearnings, and absurd prophecies mixed with the reality of this picture of Sinai in front of my eyes. Suddenly the hidden decision ripening inside me found its features. “That is my road,” I said aloud. “I’ve found what I am going to do: I shall go to Sinai. There my eyes will be opened!”
21
THE DESERT. SINAI
IN MY MIND, Sinai, the mountain trodden by God, had gleamed for many years as an inaccessible peak. Before the famous monastery, built on top of the bush that “burned with fire but was not consumed,” came the Red Sea, Arabia Petraea, the tiny harbor of Raïtho, the long journey by camel across the desert and the erratic course through the terrible, inhuman mountains where the groaning Hebrews had spent so many years.
Galilee, with its idyllic grace, harmonious mountains, blue sea, and tiny charming lake, extends smilingly behind Jesus’ back and resembles Him as a mother resembles her son. It is a simple, lucid commentary beneath the text of the New Testament. In Galilee, God reveals himself as pacific, non-demanding, and jolly—like a fine human being.
But I had always been stirred by the Old Testament; it responded much more deeply to the needs of my soul. Every time I perused this raw Bible full of vengeance and thunderbolts, this book which steams if you touch it, just like the mountain to which God descended, I felt a burning desire to go and see these inhuman peaks where it was born, to see them with my own eyes and touch them.
I shall never forget a short and impulsive debate I once had with a girl in a garden.
“I’m disgusted with poetry, art, and books,” I said. “They all seem without s
ubstance to me, made of cardboard. It’s as though you were hungry, and instead of being given bread, wine, and meat, you were handed the menu, which you chewed up like a goat.”
I don’t know what had come over me to make me angry. Perhaps it was the fact that I fancied the girl who was standing in front of me, but could not touch her.
She resembled a Russian peasant lass: pale, with pronounced cheekbones and a broad mouth. As I looked at her, my anger increased. I was holding a rose, and I began to pluck out its petals.
“That’s how our enfeebled souls satisfy their hunger—like goats!”
The girl winked her eye roguishly and answered with a laugh, “You speak angrily to me, but actually I agree with you. The only real book is the Old Testament, because it is not made of cardboard but is all flesh and bone, and dripping with blood. To my mind the Gospels are a cup of camomile tea for the simple-minded and bedridden. Jesus was truly a lamb; they slaughtered Him on the green grass at Eastertime and He bleated away docilely, without resisting. Jehovah is my God—severe, heavy Jehovah, dressed in the skins of the wild beasts He killed, like a barbarian coming out of the wilderness, a hatchet passed through His waistband. With this hatchet He opens my heart and enters.”
She remained silent for a moment, her cheeks blazing. But the flames had not subsided, and she continued.
“Do you remember how He speaks to men? Have you seen how men and mountains melt in His hands, how kingdoms are engulfed beneath His foot? Man shouts, weeps, begs, hides in caves, burrows into ditches—struggles to escape. But Jehovah is planted in his heart like a dagger.”
Once more the girl remained silent, as did I. But I felt the dagger in the depths of my heart.
That day marked the first kindling of my desire to see and touch the riverbed God had opened as He passed through the desert; of my desire to enter it as a person enters the lion’s den. And now, glory be to God, the hour had come for me to satisfy this new hunger.
My passage seemed like a fleeting dream, a fiery and enchanting vision: Jerusalem to Suez, then Suez to Raïtho, the port of Arabia Petraea, whence I would depart for God-trodden Sinai. The mountains were pale blue, the water green, the harbor broad and open, with some red, yellow, and black caiques in the innermost recesses and a few poor cottages along the shore. Great tranquility. Two camels appeared on the quay, turned their heads for a moment toward the sea, swayed a little, and then with great rhythmical strides vanished between the houses.
A skiff with a white sail came to take me. In it was a chubby boyish monk. The Sinaitic fathers residing at Cairo had sent word of my arrival.
My heart was dancing as I set foot on the coarse sand. Could all this be a dream? The shore line was covered with large shells; the houses were constructed of lithoidal trees taken from the sea, of fossilized corals and sponges, of starfish and immense turtle shells. Several fellahs standing on the landing stage gleamed swarthily in their white jelabs; a small chocolate-tinted girl was playing in the sand, dressed in a brilliant shade of bougainvillaea.
Farther back were several European homes made of wood, with verandas, large colored umbrellas, doll-like gardens, and discarded tin cans strewn all about. Two Englishwomen sat on a green balcony; in this warm desert they seemed exceedingly pale, as though they had fainted.
The boyish monk who had come to fetch me explained that it was here in Raïtho that the quarantine of the Moslems returning from Mecca took place. At such times the deserted shore line filled with thousands of hadjis. There was great tumult, with tambours and hautboys, and hodjas sitting cross-legged on the sand reading the Koran in loud, incantatory voices.
We reached the dependency which the Sinaites maintained in Raïtho. From here we would take the camels and depart for the God-trodden mountain. The large courtyard was bounded by several cells, the guest quarters, a school for boys, another for girls, and the storerooms, kitchens, and stables. The chapel stood in the middle. But the greatest miracle of all in this Arabian desert was the warm, love-filled heart of Archimandrite Theodosius, the dependency’s Superior. Greeks came only rarely to this wilderness, and Archimandrite Theodosius, a tall, ardent, stately Hellene from Tsesmés in Asia Minor, welcomed me as though he were welcoming Greece itself.
The whole of the exquisite ritual of sacred hospitality was performed, the ritual so familiar to me: the spoonful of jam, the Turkish coffee with a glass of cold water, the beautifully set table with its white perfumed tablecloth, the joy glowing in the faces of those who served the guest.
Through the window I could see the Red Sea glittering and the Thebaid mountains outlined in the distance, drowned in light. I spoke with the Superior about the “three score and ten palm trees” which the Scriptures allege were found in this tiny hamlet by the Hebrews after they crossed the Red Sea. I asked about the “twelve wells of water” as though inquiring about dear relatives living abroad. And when he told me that the palm forest still existed and the springs still flowed, I rejoiced.
I had tasted similar happiness very often in my life—after a fatiguing journey a glass of cold water, a simple goodly shelter, a human heart living unknown in an inglenook of the world, waiting warm and unspent for the stranger. And when the stranger appears at the end of the street, how this heart bounds and rejoices because it has found a human being! As in love, so in hospitality, surely he who gives is happier than he who receives.
The Archimandrite and I ate together at the cordial, hospitable table and conversed like two old friends pleased to be reunited. Here in the desert a multitude of questions had been born in him and he thirsted to have me answer them. I told him about large cities, the disbelief and anguish of contemporary man, the arrogance of the rich and destitution of the poor, the impotence of men of honor; then about the great upheaval taking place in Russia.
“Do those Muscovites out there believe in God?” the Superior asked apprehensively.
“No, they believe in man.”
“In that worm?” said the Superior with scorn.
“Yes, in that worm, Father Theodosius,” I replied obstinately, suddenly feeling the need to defend this worm.
A satanic desire had begun to rage within me. The serpent was climbing up the Tree of Knowledge and hissing. The monk listened greedily.
Thus, leading the serene eremite’s heart into temptation, transforming his tranquility into apprehension, I repaid his hospitality in the highest possible fashion.
Along came Taëma, Mansour, and Aoua. Dressed in parti-colored jelabs, with turbans of camel’s hair on their heads and long yataghans at their waists, they were the three camel drivers—supple thin-legged Bedouins with small eagle eyes—who were going to accompany me on the three-day, three-night journey to the monastery and protect me in case of danger. According to an ancient chronicle, Bedouins see twice the distance our eyes are able to reach, smell smoke from three miles away and identify what kind of wood is burning, distinguish between the tracks left in the sand by men and those left by women, and tell whether the women are married, unmarried, or pregnant.
They greeted us without speaking, placing their palms to breast, mouth, and forehead. Visible behind them in the courtyard were three camels laden with towering loads for the journey: provisions, blankets, and a tent. By this time I had learned a few words of Arabic, the most indispensable for the three days I was going to live with the Bedouins—their words for bread, water, fire, and God.
The camels knelt. Their gleaming eyes were very beautiful, but devoid of kindness. Their harnesses were decorated with orange and black tassels made of hair.
“Give the camels a few dates for their sweet tooth,” ordered the Superior, and the young monk ran out, his fists filled with dates.
The Archimandrite and I embraced, our eyes but a hairbreadth from welling with tears.
We departed. Just a little beyond the monastery’s dependency began the desert—gray, taciturn, and sterile.
The camel’s sure, undulating rhythm transports your body, your blood takes on
the rhythm of this undulation, and, together with your blood, so does your soul. Time frees itself from the geometric subdivisions into which it has been so humiliatingly jammed by the sober, lucid mind of the West. Here, with the rocking of the “desert ship,” time is released from its mathematical, firm-set confines; it becomes a substance that is fluid and indivisible, a light, intoxicating vertigo which transforms thought into reverie and music.
Given over for hours on end to this rhythm, I began to understand why Anatolians read the Koran swaying to and fro as though on camelback. In this manner they impart to their souls the monotonous, intoxicating movement which leads them to the great mystic desert—to ecstasy.
Extending before us as far as the eye could see was a tempestuous rose-colored expanse. I supposed it was the sea. The three Bedouins came together, whispered secretly to one another, then separated again. We continued on. It was not the sea; all that rosy expanse was the desert, churned up by a fearful tempest which gave the burning sand clouds their rosy hue. Before long we entered the sandstorm. It took our breath away. Taëma cut short his song; the three Bedouins wrapped themselves tightly in their burnooses and covered their mouths and nostrils.
The sand rose up, striking our faces and hands, wounding them. The camels began to spin about, unable to keep their balance. Although the tortuous passage lasted three hours, I rejoiced secretly that I had been enabled to add this terrible desert whirlwind to my experiences.
The sun began to set; we had left the storm behind us and were finally nearing the mountains. Little by little the desert commenced to turn violet and be covered with shadows. Taëma, who had been going in the lead, stopped and gave the signal to set up camp. “Krr! Krr!” gurgled the Bedouin throats. The camels snorted. They knelt on their front legs, then fell back on their hindquarters, thundering like houses crumpling to the ground.