The air became chilly. Spinoza wrapped himself tightly in his black cotton robe.
We turned our steps homeward. He quoted parts of his Ethics and explained them by mathematical formulæ. Never since Ali Hasan did mathematics contain so much beauty and wisdom. I did not dare interrupt the flow of his words lest the cup slip from the hand and the precious draft spill upon the sand.
We reached his door. He looked at me for a long time.
“If the way to God seems exceedingly hard, it can nevertheless be reached. All things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
“Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “you are weary today. May I come in a day or two again and listen to your words once more?”
He sighed. “Yes, certainly.”
He pressed my hand and entered the house.
I did not wish to be importunate, and let a few days pass before I visited Spinoza again.
“Come, Kotikokura, this time you will accompany me. You, too, must hear the master’s words, limpid as the waters that tumble from a mountain.”
He combed his hair and arranged his cloak. “True, in his presence, we must be annointed and beautiful. He holds communion with God. We are his priests.”
We walked slowly, rhythmically. The sun had passed the meridian and like a vase over-brimming, bent a little, to pour his libation upon the earth, the cupped hands of the universe.
A calm and delicious joy possessed me.
“Kotikokura, we no longer wander strangers in an inimical country. We are the children of God—God Himself.”
“Ca-ta-pha god.”
“Yes, he is god. Kotikokura god also. The sun is god. This butterfly that perches upon the window sill, mistaking it for a meadow, is god. The air we breathe, the water we drink—everything! Life is a perpetual eucharist! Ah, Kotikokura, the curtain of night has been lifted, and the truth is beautiful.”
Kotikokura’s eyes closed half-way, voluptuously.
“I sought logic but found instead irrationality. I sought beauty but found ugliness. I sought life and discovered death. The master, in his few years of existence, without hurry, without despair, sought what every man should seek—God—and found Him infinitely more beautiful than any priest or saint had ever imagined Him. People speak glibly of God’s omniscience and omnipotence, but think of Him as dying upon the cross, as shouting through bushes, as riding upon a camel, as howling across the thunder. Spinoza, out of his own magnificent brain, discovered the true nature of God—timeless, spaceless, all-inclusive. No one is a stranger, no one is homeless. The gates have been thrown wide open, all are welcome, all are within the limitless castle. No Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, no angry judge, no sycophantic angels, no merciless devils. We are all one. An infinite circle embraces us like the white perfumed arms of a new love.”
Kotikokura raised his arms ecstatically to the sun.
“This God requires neither prayer nor bribing. No hosannahs must be sung to His Holy Name. The knees need not bend before Him, or His mercy be invoked. He is not merely a human king a thousandfold enlarged. He is that which is. He is ourselves. He is Ca-ta-pha. He is Kotikokura.”
Kotikokura grasped my arm. We quickened our pace. Our hearts beat like triumphant drums.
On the threshold of Spinoza’s home, the old woman sat, knitting slowly. She was not aware of our arrival. Kotikokura scraped his foot. She looked up. I greeted her. She answered vaguely.
“The Master,” I said, almost in a whisper, “is he in his room? May I see him?”
“The Master,” she answered, “is dead.”
The universe, so beautiful, so vast, so perfect a few minutes previously, shrank to the size of a coffin and God assumed the shape of a worm.
“He was buried yesterday,” and lowering her head, she proceeded to knit, tears trickling upon her hands.
I remained standing, silent for a long while. Then I seated myself next to her.
“The Master called you Little Mother. He loved you.”
She looked at me, her face wrinkled as if a nervous hand had crumpled it.
“I loved him too. He was the gentlest man that ever lived. He did not know the meaning of hate. Even the spiders in his room he would not kill.” She wiped her heavily-rimmed spectacles, wet from tears. “He made these, the Master, and I can see through them as if I still had the eyes of my youth.”
“What has become of the Master’s papers?”
“They are locked in the drawer of his table. His printer will take care of them. So the Master ordered.”
“Did he suffer much before he died?”
“It was during the night that he began to feel ill. I went up.
He smiled and motioned me to approach. ‘Master, shall I bring the priest?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘it is not necessary. God knows everything.’ I began to weep. ‘Foolish Little Mother.’ he said. ‘Why do you weep? Must not everyone die?’ ‘You are too young, Master.’ ‘There is no time, no past, no future. There is neither death nor life.’ I did not understand him. I am not learned. I am an ignorant woman. I see life and I see death, but I felt what he meant. It was his great goodness that made him say what he said. ‘Sit here near me,’ he said, ‘and knit, Little Mother.’ The whole night I sat up. Towards morning, I fell asleep. When I awoke, he was dead. The doctor came but it was too late.”
“For the Master’s sake, I wish you would do me a favor, Little Mother.”
“What favor can a poor old woman like me do?”
“I want you to take this purse that your last days may not weigh too heavily upon you.”
I placed the purse in her lap.
“No, no, sir. I cannot accept it.”
“For his sake, Little Mother.”
“But I have done nothing to deserve this money.”
“You have indeed. You have been good to the wisest and best of men while others misunderstood and maligned him.”
“No, sir. I cannot– —”
“Had he had money, would he not have given it to you?”
“Yes, he would, I am sure.”
“This is his money. You must take it.”
I rose. She was about to rise also. I pressed her down gently.
“I beg of you, Little Mother.”
She looked at me for a long minute, kissed my hand, and made the sign of the cross.
“May Jesus repay you for this, sir.”
“Jesus has paid me in advance. It is because of him that I had the good fortune of meeting the Master.”
I took Kotikokura’s arm and we walked slowly homeward. “Jesus, Spinoza, Ca-ta-pha,—all Jews and all denied by their people! Strange race giving birth to gods whom they do not recognize, whom they crucify, stone and stab. Stranger still that Spinoza whom I only saw once should have made me realize that I no longer hate Jesus, that he is of my blood, that he is my friend! Who, indeed, should know him and love him if not Ca-ta-pha?”
A dove, white as a handful of snow, descended from one of the houses and settled at our feet.
“Kotikokura!” I exclaimed, “Jesus lives.”
“He lives and Spinoza lives and Apollonius and all those who thought beautiful thoughts, whose hearts beat in harmony with the universe, with God.”
Kotikokura raised his arms toward the sun and uttered the prayer of his tribe.
“The sun is the Father, the Earth his beloved Daughter, conceived immaculate, by His eternal wisdom. Hail Sun, Father of us all!” I exclaimed.
“Ca-ta-pha… Ca-ta-pha… Ca-ta-pha.” Kotikokura uttered, facing the sun.
I communed in silence with the World Spirit. My soul was one with the universe.
LXXVI: AT THE DOCK OF SAARDAM—THE HUMOR OF THE TSAR—KOTIKOKURA FORGETS—I BUILD A CITY—THE EMPIRE OF GOLD