IV
Only once per year—on the Day of Atonement—was the High Priest permitted to enter the Holy of Holies, the most sacred room of God’s house. Only this once, without being punished on the spot by a bolt from the Almighty. Yet it was to the Holy of Holies that Johanan now directed his steps. He desired to see God, and death held no terrors for him. His heart was embittered, his spirit downcast. He was not of God’s chosen few. What mattered to him a continuance of life in unworthiness?
He prepared himself with ablutions and performance of sacrifice, and clothed himself in white. Before the entrance to the Holy of Holies he paused for a moment. In fear, but also in expectation: perhaps God would yet send him a token. It was everywhere so still, and the semi-darkness of the room in which he stood was as though peopled with spirits. He looked in horror about him and his heart beat wildly. He did not retreat, however, nor did he desist from his firm purpose. With unbending will, yet with trembling hand, he opened the heavy door to the Holy of Holies, and dashed, rather than walked, into it. His eyes were as if dazzled, his legs sagged beneath him, his heart was almost rent. He leaned against the wall to keep from falling. He neither saw nor heard anything. He stood rooted in great terror.
Gradually he recovered his composure. How long had he been there? And he was still alive? His eyes opened wide with astonishment; he tore himself away from the wall and surveyed his surroundings. All was silent and calm in the dark solitude of the room. The Satijah stone, the Rock of the World, which stood there in place of the vanished Holy Ark, he felt rather than saw. Silence. A vast silence. He rolled his eyes about, listening intently. Nothing. Four bare walls, the Satijah Stone and he alone. And nothing else. He cried aloud with amazement. And his present stupefaction was even greater than his previous terror. He straightened himself out, proud and arrogant. His countenance grew stern and ireful. He began, from force of habit, to go out with his back to the entrance and with his face to the Ark, but at once he wheeled about and with firm steps left the Holy of Holies and the Temple.
He went to Athaliah, the beloved of Jason, son of Meshulem.
She looked at him in surprise and fright. The High Priest in her home!
“I have come for your love,” he said.
She screamed and recoiled from him with hand upraised to defend herself.
“I am handsome and strong and capable of inspiring a woman’s passion. You yourself said so, and I have come for your love.”
She tried to flee but firmly he barred her way.
“I have had nothing of all my life. Nothing of my beauty and strength. Your own Jason said so. Now I desire to enjoy what I have missed as long as strength and beauty remain with me.”
She wished to make an outcry, but her throat was as if tightened with fetters.
He embraced her with a powerful arm and she turned and writhed as though a snake were coiling about her.
And he spoke:
“I have come for your love. Are you afraid of me? Do I arouse your aversion? Am I too old for you? My white hair recalls the snowy cold of death. But I still live and am strong and passionate, and I have come for your love.”
Athaliah, ghastly pale, squirmed in his arms and gasped, in fright and loathing. “Let me go! Let me go!”
But he took her in his arms and with his keen eyes seemed to devour her beauty.
“I’ll have your love. You shall have to belong to me. If not willingly, then by force. I am all-powerful; you know that. Your life is in my hands, and the life of your sweetheart, and the life of all those near and dear to you.”
Athaliah now regained her voice. “No! No!” she shrieked. “Kill me! Slay me alone!”
“You shall belong to me. I do not wish your death. I desire you in your living beauty. I am very wealthy,—the richest of all our people. I will clothe you in gold and silver, and bedeck you with precious stones. Ask what you wish and it shall be granted. Why do you fear me so? I am old in years, but strong in body, and I wish to enjoy that strength. Be mine and you shall never regret it.”
His words, which echoed with gold, and his arm, which spoke of great masculine strength, changed Athaliah’s mind. She became the mistress of the High Priest, but for a few days only. For a savage fury befell the High Priest; he desired to enjoy the pleasures of the senses more and more, and he changed his mistresses every day, intoxicated with lust and wine. Then, to the great horror of his people, he also took to drinking.
His wife, his children, and all those who were truly pious and decent, together with all to whom the honour of their people was very dear, tried with despair in their hearts to turn him from the terrible life he had begun to lead. They also tried to learn how all this had so suddenly come to him,—how he could so completely have forgotten God. But he did not speak to them; he was as one dumb. And it seemed that no invocation of God or the Torah could touch his heart or his ear.
And many who were not decent, and to whom the honour of their people was worth less than the smallest coin that fell into their purses, became his flatterers and pandered to his desires. For he was prodigal with his gold, and that was all they desired of him; the deeper he sank into lust and dissipation, the more gold came into their clutches.
Soon, however, his eighty years began to tell. He grew weak and impotent, but he could still guzzle and he became a disgust and a fright.
The people felt that they must be freed of him, and his death was decided upon. They remembered, however, what he had been for eighty years and none cared to lay hands upon him. It was resolved that his death should be an honourable one, happening as if by accident. And once, on an evening in which he had drunk more than usual, he was abducted from his sycophants, taken into the mountains and left lying upon the brink of a precipice over a deep sea. No one’s hand was lifted to thrust him over the edge, and with tears in their eyes and sad shakings of their heads they abandoned him to his fate.
He lay motionless, sunk in a deep sleep. But the first rays of the rising sun awakened him. He stretched out his arms as if to reach for the wine that stood now always before him. He grasped only the air. He groped and groped about and at last opened his eyes. He opened them wider and wider, distending them more and more. Where was he? He looked around, to this side and to that, above and below. He saw the abyss. Slowly and gradually it dawned upon him that he lay upon the brink of a high precipice. How had he come hither? Who had brought him? Slowly and leisurely he looked over the edge. If he should fall in.... Then he understood. This was his death-sentence. He had been condemned to death and the hands of his judges were to remain clean. His blood boiled. He wished to arise at once, but he was not strong enough. He rolled his head about, thumped the earth with his fists, gnashed his teeth. Weary and utterly exhausted, he remained lying there and somewhat later began to gaze around him. Where on earth was he?
He beheld before him a large sea girded by green mountains. It looked like a huge cauldron, over which arose the queen of day, pure, youthful and flaming. From the mountain forests far and near there wafted up to her a thin blue mist. The earth was uncovering itself before the sun, receiving its beams with delight, shouting to her in radiant green. Quite near to him there sparkled dazzlingly the snow-capped peak of Mount Lebanon, mischievously reflecting with all the colours of the rainbow its lance-like rays of the sun. And the calm, deep sea received into its bosom all the light of heaven and earth and redoubled their splendour.
Johanan lay and gazed without taking into account what he saw, but he was inundated with the surrounding splendour. And suddenly his lips began to murmur, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, Thou art very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest Thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain.”
Thus he murmured and his spirit was not with him. He did not know what issued from his lips. He repeated it several times. Always the same passages. “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, Thou art very great; Thou art clothed with honour and majesty....” And his heart became softer and softer.
Then he suddenly became aware of what he was saying and was startled. God’s name upon his lips! He, full of God,—of God, against whom he had spoken, against whom he had rebelled so arrogantly! He burst into tears. Ever so softly, without the slightest sound, but his heart was torn, rent asunder. He was weeping over the last few weeks, over the wretched life he had been leading, and his subdued crying was filled with deep lamentation, filled with regret and repentance, yet his eyes did not turn from the great beauty and glory around him. It seemed to him that now, for the first time, he grasped that which all his life he had not known. He who creates such a wealth of beauty and splendour cannot be merely austere and harsh. And in his dejection he was consoled by the hope that God was good, merciful and loving.
He tried to arise, return to his people and tell them what he had there discovered, but his strength abandoned him. Then he knew that his end had come. He was terrified. God! Anything but to be left lying there in the ugliness of death! But soon he composed himself. He began to murmur a prayer, opening his eyes wide in contemplation of God’s beautiful world. And when he felt that his eyes were growing heavy, he made only a single movement—and he fell like lead into the deep waters.