“Then he who kills is God,” I remarked.
“The Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away. His ways are inscrutable. If Jesus commanded the children to wither, it was part of His divine plan, I assure you.”
I laughed. “He was cruel, and he was cruel to me. His eyes blazed with anger when he hurled his anathema against me, without attempting to understand my motives. If he had read my heart he would not have cursed me. He acted rashly, and he acted in anger. Perhaps he inherited his unreasonable irascibility from his putative Father in Heaven…”
“He gave you the opportunity to find your soul…” the Bishop said gently.
“No!” I exclaimed. “He meant evil, but I have conquered him! By my will and by my intelligence, I have transformed his curse into a blessing.”
“God’s ways are incomprehensible to man,” the Bishop repeated suavely.
“Let man be incomprehensible to God, then!” I exclaimed.
“Only man’s vanity is incomprehensible to God, my son.”
“Man’s vanity, then, shall conquer God!”
“So Lucifer believed, and he was hurled to destruction!”
“Lucifer lives on, Father. He is not destroyed.”
We remained silent. The Bishop placed his hands upon my shoulders, and looked at me, his eyes covered with a film. “My son, believe me, if you understood Jesus you would accept Him.”
“I understand…therefore, I cannot accept!”
“You have denied Him too long. He loves you. He waits for you. He will return whenever your heart calls Him… You can end your long pilgrimage whenever you wish. You need not tarry until the end of time… Give up your age-long battle against His love and His Holy Word.”
“How can I, a poor mortal, harm his Holy Word, if he indeed is God? You exaggerate my power, Bishop. In the great sea of humanity, is a man more than a wave?”
“One unruly wave may capsize a boat.”
“If Christianity is the work of God, who is strong enough to destroy it?”
“No one!” he exclaimed. “And yet,” he continued sadly, “people may so distort and misinterpret it, that it were almost better destroyed…”
“Father, from the clash of mountains, there arises a conflagration; out of the struggle between Jesus and myself…who knows, something more beautiful than either Christianity or pure reason may be born.”
“Christ is perfection.”
His words startled me. It seemed as though I suddenly saw something—a Light—a Vision. I tried to grasp it, but it vanished immediately.
I smiled. “Father, that which we seek and find,—is it worth the finding?”
“Only one thing is worth the finding,—Jesus.”
The two friars, the Bishop’s companions, were approaching, and at a distance, propped against a tree, Kotikokura was patting a large cat and squinting his eyes in my direction.
“We are both very tired, my son. Let us rest a little. This evening we shall speak again.”
He arose, pressed my hands, and walked towards his friends. The Bishop’s face, as it broke the reflection of the sun, appeared strangely different from that of Apollonius. Had I been laboring under an illusion? Had I made a grave error in recounting my story? My head ached. My heart felt heavy.
“Kotikokura, we must leave this beautiful and happy place. We must leave our two good wives.”
Kotikokura shrugged his shoulders.
“I know you have long ago wearied of yours, and perhaps I have a little of mine. However great a discomfort may be, there is always a grain of pleasure in it. Thus, our leaving here will not make it necessary for you to carry out your intention.”
Kotikokura looked at me quizzically.
“Kotikokura, I know you too well. You cannot hide your thoughts from me. You meant to strangle your wife…and perhaps mine…and throw them into the river.”
Kotikokura grinned.
“Nevertheless, I doubt whether we shall ever discover another place as lovely as this.”
He shook his head sadly.
Kotikokura’s cat crawled between his legs, purring. He raised her and fondled her.
“You regret leaving your cat more than your wife—do you not my friend?”
Kotikokura nodded.
XLVIII: THE EMPIRE OF PRESTER JOHN—“IF I WILL THAT HE TARRY TILL I COME WHAT IS THAT TO THEE?”—KOTIKOKURA DANCES—CAN MAN INVENT A LIE?
“PRESBYTER JOHANNES, by the power and virtue of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, Lord of Lords,” the friar exclaimed, “will deliver us from the infidels and the heathens. His power is limitless and his lands are the richest in the world. Even the pebbles of the shores of his rivers are pure diamonds and the mountains are replete with gold. In the center of the empire, the Fountain of Youth falls softly into a thousand cups, and he who drinks of it shall never die. Presbyter Johannes shall come to deliver us. He shall come with his hundred thousand knights and three hundred thousand footmen; with the princes and kings of the seventy-two states that pay him tribute; with his chariots and elephants and strange creatures that devour ten men at one meal.”
His listeners laughed, some pointed to their foreheads, one or two asked him a few questions. The friar expostulated against the Moors and the Saracens who had defeated the Crusaders, were knocking at the gates of Vienna, and threatened to destroy Europe and Christianity.
The people dispersed one by one. Only Kotikokura and I remained. Prester John—Presbyter Johannes—for some obscure reason, troubled my mind, like a word that one tries to restore in time and space but cannot.
“Brother,” I said to the friar, “where is his empire and who is Presbyter Johannes?”
He looked at me startled. “Who is Presbyter Johannes?”
I nodded.
“He is…the Lord of Lords.”
“I understand that…and yet– —”
He approached my ear and whispered mysteriously, “He is John, the Apostle.”
“But John the Apostle is dead.”
“How can he be dead, having drunk of the Fountain of Youth?”
“Of course,” I said vaguely.
“The Lord Jesus has kept His beloved disciple alive and has made him great and powerful that he may save the cross from destruction.”
‘John,’ I mused. Could it really be he? Speaking of John, Jesus said to Peter: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee…?” There was a rumor among the Christians based on these words that John could not die. But Jesus merely said: “If I will.” Had he willed it? Had his love wrought for John what his hate had wrought for me…?
“Whence, brother friar, will Prester John start?” I asked.
“From the center of his empire, which is the center of the earth—a far-off land, thousands of miles beyond Jerusalem, which, however, he will deliver first…”
“In the heart of Asia, then?”
He nodded.
I gave him a coin.
He bowed very low, making the sign of the cross over Kotikokura and me.
“Kotikokura, man is incapable of inventing a pure lie or discovering a pure truth. What this friar said today must have a grain of reality…”
Kotikokura grinned.
“And if John lives…alas, you do not remember John…that is true. It was a few centuries before I discovered you. You are a mere stripling, Kotikokura…”
Kotikokura laughed, and danced about me.
“Let us go in search of this fabulous land, Kotikokura, and see what scrap of reality suffices to create a legend…”
The reputation of Presbyter Johannes or Prester John was much more widespread than I suspected. Some laughed at the notion, some disputed; others proved his existence or nonexistence by the Scriptures. But everywhere his name was mentioned and discussed.
We wandered about, taking now one road, now another, according to the vague and contradictory directions we received, stopping only to recuperate and replenish our supplies. The farther Europe disappeared behind us, the less resplendent became the empire of Prester John.