The trial was nearing its end.
I stood up with a jerk. “Is it permissible, Your Reverence,” I asked the Bishop, “to put a question to the Jew?”
“Yes.”
“Isaac,” I said, “what was your father’s name?”
Isaac looked at me. The suddenness of my question disconcerted him. He shivered a little and remained perplexed.
“Well, have you forgotten it?” I asked.
“Abraham,” he answered. “I had not forgotten it; only the memory upset me.”
“It’s a lie! Your father’s name was Joseph.”
“Joseph! True, true! I was thinking of my brother.”
“The Wandering Jew was an only son!”
The Hall changed into a hive of bees, buzzing noisily. The Bishop stood up. The two professors bent over the pulpit.
“And your mother’s name—have you forgotten that also?”
“It is so long ago, sir,” he whimpered.
“Your mother’s name!” I insisted.
“Esther,” he answered.
“It’s a lie! Her name was Ruth, as any one can find out by consulting the secret history of Pilate in the library of the Vatican, as I did. You have read diligently the confessions of the Wandering Jew to the Armenian Bishop. You have listened to the rumors and gossip, but over these trifles you trip!
“Ahasuerus never cringed as you do. That is fable. He was proud and dignified. Nor did he pretend poverty. He was wealthier than kings. You are a fraud, seeking sympathy, notoriety, and a purse.”
“Impostor! Fraud!” rang through the hall.
“Besides, was it necessary to stuff your back with a cushion?”
Several people rushed up to Isaac and tapped his back. I had guessed rightly.
Isaac knelt before the judges and begged forgiveness.
“Jesus may pardon you when you tremble before him at the Last Judgment. We, however, cannot forgive the insult to ourselves and the mockery to our Lord,” the Bishop said, and turning to an attendant, he ordered, “Take him out and await our decision.”
Isaac, beaten and spat upon by the audience, was dragged out.
My familiarity with the story of the Wandering Jew aroused suspicion. The Oxford professors attempted to entrap me in divers discussions. It tested my ingenuity to escape from the meshes of their cross-examination. I was not in a mood to play with danger, and shook the dust of Oxford off my heels leaving behind me a pair of boots.
LXX: QUEEN ELIZABETH PASSES—DUST TO DUST—I DISCOVER MYSELF IN A BOOK
AFTER our departure from Oxford we spent a generation or two in Ireland. Under the name of Baron de Martini I bought an estate, where life flowed on as a small river hidden between two valleys.
One day a rock was hurled into the quiet waters. An heir of the man from whom I had bought my estate discovered a flaw in the title.
I determined to go to London to seek justice at the fountain head.
London fluttered like a young bride. Flags, music, confetti, laughter, and colors—a hundred nuances of red, green, blue, yellow—as if a rainbow had been crumbled and scattered by some absent-minded divinity, or one awaiting nervously the verdict of a goddess he courted.
London expected the Virgin Queen.
“Kotikokura, we are fortunate. We have arrived on time. It is a good omen. We shall win our case.”
Trumpets announced the arrival of Queen Elizabeth. Soldiers urged and pushed the crowds to the two sides of the streets, making room for the procession. A regiment of cavalry preceded the landau all gilded and dazzling like a setting sun, drawn by six milk-white steeds, arrogant, as if the applause and the hurrahs were intended for them.
The Queen sat erect as a statue, a coronet upon her head and masses of jewels upon her chest and arms. In her right hand, she held a scepter, in her left a large fan of peacock feathers. It was not possible to tell whether she was thin or stout, for her dress, hoop-like and stiff from the whalebones, occupied nearly the entire carriage, which moved very slowly to allow the people to gaze upon their monarch. From time to time, she nodded slightly to one side or the other.
The people shouted: “Long live the Queen! Long live the Queen!” Many in the front lines knelt; others threw flowers and confetti on the horses or against the wheels, careful not to strike the august occupant.
For a fraction of a second, her eyes met mine. The procession seemed to whirl about me. I closed my eyes tightly as if to lock within them the impression they had received. When I opened them again, the landau had already passed by, leaving behind it a small hillock of dust.
“Did you see her eyes, Kotikokura?” I asked nervously.
Kotikokura shook his head. He had noticed her fan, the largest he had ever seen.
“They resemble Salome’s, Kotikokura!”
He shrugged his shoulders.
The royal carriage was followed by less magnificent ones, occupied by officers of the army and navy and ladies of the highest nobility. The people exclaimed from time to time the names of an occupant, and waved their hats.
I was too perturbed to be interested. Hatred and love, pleasure and disgust, mingled within me, making curious patterns.
“Her hair,—did you notice, Kotikokura?—also resembled Salome’s, but it was faded, despite the sheen of the oil, and tended to grayness.”
Kotikokura watched the people throw flowers and ribbons and hats into the air.
“She has a ruler’s face, Kotikokura. There is no doubt of that,—majestic, serene, wise. But what does she lack? What ingredient in her make-up repels rather than attracts?”
Kotikokura was busy removing the wet confetti which a girl had thrown at him, and dotted his entire face, like colored smallpox.
“It is not a question of homeliness, Kotikokura. Homely women have pleased me. She is not homely.”
Kotikokura grumbled, “Woman,” waving his fist at the invisible perpetrator of the jest.
“She is neither man nor woman! Have you noticed that?” I said a little irritably.
Kotikokura nodded, fearing to disagree.
Another regiment approached in a tumult of trumpets.
“She is like the sphinxes we saw in Egypt, Kotikokura. Impenetrable as stone. No wonder she is a virgin!”
Kotikokura grinned.
“Ah, if Salome were queen! If she drove in a golden chariot through the streets of her capital! Man would grow mad with beauty! Ah, Salome!”
The last horseman galloped past us. The people began pushing in all directions, shouting to one another, exclaiming their last hurrahs.
“And yet, she does resemble Salome,—and that is what angers me, that is what saddens me, Kotikokura.”
Kotikokura, holding his elbows at right angles, cleared the passage. Now and then, some one swore at us, shouting ugly epithets.
“Fool, you nearly cut through me!”
“Draw your sword, rascal!”
“The caricature of a thing we love is distressing, Kotikokura. This is what Salome might have been, had the gods been in a less joyous mood. A twist here, a wrench there,—a passion extinguished, a feminine charm removed… And yet, she must be a great queen. But a woman, alas, she is not!”
Kotikokura continued to clear the way unperturbed.
“But I must forget this woman. I must obliterate her image, that the image of the greater queen may not become distorted in my mind.”
“By Jove, will you not cease pushing?”
“Villain!”
“Scoundrel!”
“Low-bred!”
“Come, Kotikokura, let us not get into useless trouble. Here is a bookshop. Let us enter for a while.”
The owner, a very small man, clean-shaven, red-cheeked, approached us, limping a little, and bowing deeply.
“Have you seen the Queen, gentlemen?”
“Yes.”
“Alas, I could not go. My rheumatism did spite me just on this day! Is Her Majesty as beautiful as our poets claim?”
“She is,” I answered.
He raised his eyes, so vague a blue that they appeared nearly white, and sighed profoundly. “Who knows if I shall ever have the joy of gazing upon my Queen?” he exclaimed.