I decided to leave. Abu-Bekr did not persuade me to remain. He had begun to think of me in terms of the superhuman, and accepted my word as irrevocable. Perhaps, too, he feared me. Could I not, if I wished, claim to be Mohammed returned to life, or his appointed successor?
True to the word of the Prophet, however, he paid his debts with a large interest, and we took farewell of each other, promising to meet in Paradise, and sit on opposite couches, rejoicing in the bounties of Allah and His Prophet, Mohammed.
XXXV: I SEEK MY SOUL—BAGDAD CHATTERS—I HIRE FIVE HUNDRED CRAFTSMEN—ALI HASAN AND MAMDUH BARAZI—THE MULTIPLICATION TABLE OF LOVE
“KOTIKOKURA, I must find my soul. Cartaphilus cannot live without a soul, or with a soul, entangled among trifles, like the roots of a tree. Cartaphilus must hold his soul in the palm of his hand, like a perfect crystal. He must watch the shadows of his existence dance upon it, and guess what strange things are the realities casting them.”
Kotikokura grinned.
“But my soul, Kotikokura, will not stay motionless upon my palm. It is quicksilver, not crystal. It slides off, breaking into many pieces. I must gather them together, and it is not easy.”
“Ca-ta-pha will find.”
“Where? Once—long ago—you whirled about me, Kotikokura and your head pointed the way; but it is not wise to address Fate twice in the same fashion. She remembers, and being a woman of caprices, may purposely misguide us. This time, my friend, we must reason our path…and what is more fallacious than reason? Here, however, we cannot remain. Come! Let us wander aimlessly, and perhaps our feet, wiser than our heads, shall tell us whither to go and where to stop.”
In front of us four slaves urged the oxen that pulled the two carts filled with our belongings,—mainly books, curious bits of art and part of my gold and precious stones hidden in statuary and vases.
Kotikokura rode at my side. From time to time, I would tell him something. His answers were invariably a grin or a half-articulate growl. Nevertheless, I felt that somehow he understood me, perhaps better than any human being I had known through the centuries.
What united him to me? Was it merely because he had been my companion for so long, or because he had rebelled, as I had, against some irrational divinity? Was the Hindu doctor right, perhaps, that the blood contained the soul and the life of man, and Kotikokura having partaken of my blood had become, in some mysterious way—myself—an inarticulate elemental self,—a self long buried within me, which I no longer knew or recognized?
Had I always been a rebel, from the very beginning of life? How many gods had I mocked or destroyed? Was Jesus but the mightiest of them all? Was he the only god—who could not be mocked with impunity?
“What god did you laugh at, long ago, in Africa, because of which you have become—Kotikokura?”
“Ca-ta-pha.”
“What! You laughed at Ca-ta-pha?”
He nodded.
“You believe in God Ca-ta-pha, and you laughed at him?”
He grinned.
“Do you still laugh at him?”
He nodded.
Did he understand me? Was he merely jesting? Could one mock and believe at the same time…perhaps love and hate also? Was it possible that I, too, believed in, and disbelieved, hated—and loved, Jesus?
Bagdad was in a chattering and disputatious mood. Abu-Bekr had just died, and his successor had not yet been named. But since the Prophet was no longer doubted, nor his ascension to Heaven, nor his Word, which had been copied by a thousand scribes, and memorized by all the priests and saintly men, I had neither anything to fear, nor anything to suggest. Whoever might be the man of destiny, the destiny of the new religion was to conquer the East—to crush the religion of the Nazarene.
“Kotikokura, upon that hill yonder, hidden by palm trees like a canopy, through the long thin rents of which one sees the Tigris flow quietly toward the Red Sea, there is a castle with an enormous orchard and a magnificent garden. We shall retire to it, Kotikokura, and forget for a long while the futile clamor of things.”
Kotikokura grinned, delighted. The castle belonged to a Prince who had squandered his patrimony in gambling and orgies and needed ready cash to pay his debts.
I hired five hundred craftsmen and gardeners, whose labor turned the palace into a dazzling jewel, and the garden into another Eden. I wandered about the great halls and the magnificent flower-beds, vastly bored. Kotikokura followed me, generally silent and as disconsolate. He reflected my emotions like a sensitized shadow.
“Kotikokura, my friend, life has no meaning in itself, and the days are like great iron balls chained about our necks, if we cannot discover an all-absorbing passion; if we cannot immerse ourselves in some labor or pleasure.
“When I feared that my life had reached its terminus I vowed I would not let time fly past me again.
“I would capture each hour, like a beautiful, rare bird and pluck from it whatever mystery, or good, or evil it offered. Nevertheless, my friend, here we are, both of us supremely bored in the most beautiful castle of Bagdad, and the most gorgeous garden in Araby.”
Kotikokura sighed.
“I begin to understand and forgive the gods the torture they inflict upon us, seeing how much more bored they must be than we.”
“Ca-ta-pha—God.”
“Ca-ta-pha has but one believer, hardly enough to establish a new religion.”
Kotikokura remained pensive. I plucked a rose, and gave it to him. He placed it between his teeth.
We seated ourselves upon a bench made of ivory. Its legs had the shape of many snakes intertwined.
“Two weapons only, two dazzling swords, can dispel the shadow, black and heavy, as a thing of iron, that God Ennui, squatting at all four corners of the earth, casts upon the world,—sex and knowledge. I am fortunate, Kotikokura, for what country offers more delectable women, and more profound mathematicians? With women and mathematics let us multiply pleasure.”
Kotikokura grinned, and removing the rose from his lips, placed it over his ear.
I invited Ali Hasan, famous mathematician, and Mamduh Barazi, formerly Lord Procurer to the Vizier, to pay me a visit. They appeared at the same time, bowing many times before me, wishing me endless life and prosperity beyond the dream of man. They were about the same age, and dressed in the manner of princes, wide belts, studded with jewels, and turbans, in which dazzled the crescent moon. I could not decide who was the Procurer and who the Mathematician. I smiled.
“Can you judge a man’s profession by his appearance?” one of them asked, guessing my thought.
“Marcus Aurelius, an ancient Emperor and philosopher of Rome, thought he could read a face like a manuscript. At the very moment when his lips formed this assertion, however, the Empress toyed amorously with a lusty young slave.”
“Some faces, my Lord, are limpid like crystals; others, however, are like mother-of-pearl, changing colors at every angle.”
The word ‘angle’ suggested the mathematician. I looked at the man who spoke. “I have the honor of addressing Ali Hasan.”
He shook his head. “My Lord is mistaken.”
We laughed. I invited them to spend a few weeks with me.
We were reclining on the wide benches that faced the lake, upon which twelve white and twelve black swans sailed motionless and silent, like dreams. A slave filled our cups with wine. Both Ali Hasan and Mamduh Barazi had joined the new religion of the Prophet Mohammed, but neither believed that water was to be henceforth the sole drink of man.
“The Prophet speaks of a limpid drink,” said Ali. “Is not wine limpid?”
“The Prophet said that the understanding should not be beclouded. Is not wine like some cool, fresh wind, that chases the clouds from the face of thought, which shines henceforth like a sun?” added Mamduh.