The Relic: A Novel

Four

176 Four N ext day, a radiant Sunday, we struck our tents in Jericho , and journeying with the sun towards the West, through the valley of Cherith, began our pilgrimage into Galilee. But whether because the consoling spring of admiration had dried within me or because my spirit, after being carried away for a moment to the high peaks of history and then beaten upon by rough blasts of emotion, could no longer find delight in the quiet and desolate ways of Syria, I was always tired and indifferent, even from the land of Ephraim to the land of Zebulon. When we encamped that night at Bethel, the full moon was appearing from behind the black mountains of Gilead. The festive Potte pointed out to me the sacred spot where the shepherd Jacob, having fallen asleep on a rock, had seen a gleaming ladder which ended at his feet and leaned against the stars and by which he saw ascending and descending between earth and heaven a procession of silent angels with folded wings. I yawned formidably and muttered : “Very nice.” And, thus muttering and yawning, I traversed the land of miracles. I found the charm of its valleys as tedious as the holiness of its ruins. At Jacob’s well, sitting on the very stones where Jesus, tired, like me, by the heat of those roads, and drinking , like me, from the pitcher of a woman of Samaria, had taught a new pure way of worship; on the side of Mount Carmel in the cell of a convent, listening to the clashing of the boughs of cedars which had sheltered Elias and to the moaning of the waters below, which owed fealty to Hiram, King of Tyre; galloping with cloak flying in the wind over the plain of Esdralon; gently rowing on the Lake of Gennesareth, full of light and silence: tedium stood ever at my side, a faithful companion hugging me to its soft breast under its grey cloak. T h e R e l i c 177 Sometimes nevertheless a delicate pleasant longing from a remote past faintly raised my spirit as a slow breeze raises a heavy curtain; and then, as I smoked before my tent or trotted along a dry torrent-bed, I saw again to my delight disconnected fragments of that antiquity which had absorbed my interest: the Roman baths where a marvelous creature in a yellow cap majestically offered her charms; the handsome Manasses placing his hand on his jeweled sword; merchants in theTemple unfolding brocades of Babylon; the death sentence of the Rabbi with its red mark on the stone pillar at the Gate of Judgment; the illuminated streets and the Greeks dancing ; and an eager desire would come over me to plunge again into that world irremediably lost. Laughable indeed: I, Raposo, Bachelor of Law, enjoying all the comforts of civilization, felt a longing for that barbarous Jerusalem where I had spent one day of the month of Nizzam, when Pontius Pilate was Procurator of Judea! Then these memories died down like a fire without wood; in my soul only ashes remained and before the ruins of Mount Ebal or in the orchards which scent Sichem of the Levites I started yawning afresh. When we arrived at Nazareth, which appears in the wilderness of Palestine like flowers on a tomb, I felt no interest even in the fair Jewesses for whom the heart of St. Antonine was bathed in tenderness.With their red pitchers on their shoulders, they went up among sycamores to the fountain where Mary, the Mother of Jesus, was wont to go of an afternoon, singing as they sang, dressed like they in white. The jovial Potte, twirling his moustache, addressed them with murmured madrigals; they smiled, lowering their soft heavy eyelashes . It was this modesty that made St. Antonine sigh, as he leaned on his staff and shook his long beard: “O noble virtues inherited from Mary full of grace;” for my part, I muttered dryly: “Hypocrites .” Through narrow streets in which vines and fig-trees shelter the houses, humble as befits the sweet village of Him who taught humility , we went up to the hill of Nazareth, ever blown upon by the great wind which comes from Idumea. There Topsius doffed his E ç a d e Q u e i r ó s 178 cap, saluting those distant plains which Jesus must have come to...