By then, the priest had collected his thoughts. “To the best of my knowledge,” he said, “the tradition has little to say of the threshold as a material object. One of the prophets predicts that the temple will tremble so violently that even its stone threshold will be lifted. As an image, however, it occurs time and again, though as a rule a different word is used. In the indexes of works on the subject, threshold. usually refers us to door. The threshold and the door (or gate) are seen as parts standing for the whole. In the Old Testament, the whole is the city: in one passage, the mere earthly city—‘Howl, O gate; cry, O city!’; in another, the heavenly city—‘The Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob.’ In the New Testament, the gate stands in one passage for perdition—‘the gates of hell’; in another, for salvation—‘I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved.’ Thus, the threshold is ordinarily associated with passage from one zone to another. What may be less evident is that the threshold is itself a zone, or rather, a place in its own right, a place of testing or of safety. Isn’t the ash heap where Job sits in his misery a threshold, a place of testing? Didn’t a fugitive put himself under someone’s protection by sitting down on his threshold? Doesn’t the archaic usage of ‘gate’ evoke the threshold as a dwelling place, as a room in its own right? According to modern doctrine, of course, there are no longer any thresholds in this sense. The only threshold still remaining to us, says one of our modern teachers, is that between waking and dreaming, and nowadays little attention is paid to that. Only in the insane does it protrude, visible to all, into daytime experience, like the fragments of the destroyed temples just mentioned. For a threshold, he says, is not a boundary — boundaries are on the increase both in inner and in outer life — but a precinct. The word ‘threshold’ embraces transformation, floor, river crossing, mountain pass, enclosure (place of refuge). According to an almost forgotten proverb: ‘The threshold is a fountainhead.’ And this teacher says literally: ‘It was from thresholds that lovers and friends absorbed strength. But,’ he goes on, ‘where nowadays are we to find the destroyed thresholds, if not in ourselves? By our own wounds shall we be healed. If snow stops falling from the clouds, let it continue to fall inside me.’ Every step, every glance, every gesture, says the teacher, should be aware of itself as a possible threshold and thus re-create what has been lost. This new threshold consciousness might then transfer attention from object to object, and so on until the peace relay reappears on earth, at least on that one day — and on the day after and the day after that, rather as in the child’s game where stone sharpens scissors, scissors cut paper, and paper wraps stone. Thus, thresholds as seats of power may not have disappeared; they have become conceivable, so to speak, as inner powers. If man were conscious of these thresholds, he would at least let his fellow man die a natural death. Threshold consciousness is nature religion. More cannot be promised.”
The priest pulled himself up in his chair and looked around, as though preparing to go on with his sermon, but then laughed as though surprised, exhaled, inhaled deeply, and told us how he had just remembered the stone threshold at home, on which he had often sat “bare-assed.” This threshold had been a granite block, not in the house but in the wooden barn. The threshold of the house was a simple pinewood board with an unusually deep knothole in it; he and his brothers and sisters had often sat there playing marbles in rainy weather. They had sometimes scraped their fingers on the rough board or got them full of splinters, which later festered.
His listeners also recalled things that had happened long ago. When one stopped, another took over, and the result was a single story in many voices.
“Sitting on the doorstep had a Sunday, end-of-the-day quality. A duty had been done and now you were resting. When passersby saw someone sitting this way on his doorstep, they became friendly. He was in his right place. Once, when some bigger children were chasing me with sticks, I didn’t run into the house, I waited for them on the threshold; they greeted me and nodded as if nothing had happened. Some thresholds were very high; in crossing them, you lifted your knees and bumped your head on the doorframe. Sitting on the threshold meant that the door could not be closed. Of course there wasn’t much you could do; at the most, blow soap bubbles or read, propping your heels and shoulders on the doorframe. The women would set a chair on the threshold and sit there with their knitting. I often used to stand on the threshold, watching a storm and letting the raindrops or a stray hailstone graze me. Once, when my grandmother had an attack of asthma, she ran out of the house and stood on the threshold screaming with terror and gagging (in the end, her screams were no more than squeaks). Some mornings, there were dead mice and birds’ feathers on the threshold, matted with blobs of innards. At spring-cleaning time, the thresholds got a thorough scrubbing; warm steam rose up from them, they showed their original pattern and smelled good. At Whitsuntide the thresholds were made festive with birch saplings on either side. I thought the threshold of my parents’ room was especially high. Strange signs were incised in the threshold of the house next door; it had formerly been a tombstone. The village wisdom had it that in case of earthquake you should not run out into the open but stand on the threshold under the doorframe; there you were safe. For me, ‘threshold’ evoked ‘ripping up’; because it was always the wood of the threshold that was first attacked by mold and that had to be replaced most frequently. Thresholds are noticed only in the country; in the city, they are forgotten. The most beautiful threshold I’ve ever seen was a natural creation, the entrance to a stalactite cave; it was a compact, luminous slab, perfectly rounded, an additional glassy-white floor among floors. The most beautiful threshold I ever saw was a kitchen threshold, covered with linoleum and riddled with thumbtacks; after a day of talk, I had come home to palpable things; the threshold is my place, I thought, and there I stood. Standing outside a closed door as a child, I would shout ‘Stupid pup!’ instead of ‘Open up!’ And similarly, at the threshold of the forest, I’d shout ‘Stupid pup!’ before going in. Bird tracks on the snow-covered threshold. What is the opposite of threshold phobia? Fringe benefit.”
The others turned to the questioner. Had he wanted to “test” us? He replied: “No, not test, just make you tell stories. You see, I’ve noticed that there’s no better way of getting people to tell stories than to ask them about thresholds.” In the enthusiasm of our storytelling, we even interrupted the son of the house, who was still on the telephone, to ask him what he thought a threshold was. He answered succinctly: “A nuisance!” and sank back into his telephone corner.
One after another fell silent. But this was not the usual lull in the conversation before a group breaks up. The storytelling seemed, rather, to continue in the silence, and thus to become more eloquent than ever. Each of us delved deeper into himself and there met his neighbor, with whom he now, without trying, had everything in common. “Once upon a time there was we.” (How is it that I can say “we”? After all, we were not very many. And I trusted this “we.” Once upon a time there was a fact.) One burst out laughing, seemingly out of a clear sky, and another nodded; or one drew a line through a ring of wine on the table, and his neighbor added to it.