Jonah
“And that world, my son, where you belong, is not here, among the
tribes, among the towns and villages. It is in the desert; it is in the
wilderness, where there is quiet for God to speak, where there is room
for His angels to move about. When you left Golan, your heart was like
the desert, spacious and calm. But now it is like a crowded village,
full of tumult and pain.”
“Yes,” said Jonah in a low voice, “it is full of pain.”
“I hoped you would not stay here,” continued Naaman; “I implored you to
return to Golan, to your home. Yet you stayed; with the result it was
impossible not to foresee.”
“I did not foresee it,” said Jonah.
“That is because you are ignorant,” said Naaman severely. “You do not
know the world, yet you wish to live in it.”
“No,” said Jonah, “that is not true. For such things do not happen to
everybody, or to other people. Why, love is holy, Naaman. It is as
though God had told a lie.”
“Be silent,” exclaimed Naaman harshly, “and do not blaspheme. Love
is not holy; and God does not lie. That alone is holy which concerns
itself with holy things. But love ... no, my son; it is pain and
impurity, it is violence and sorrow. The world of desire is the world
of demons, of concealment, of Sathariel which hides the face of mercy.”
Jonah regarded the old man with astonishment. “You are so bitter,” he
exclaimed; “I have never heard you speak in that tone before.”
Naaman peered off beneath his shaggy white eyebrows to the distant
hillside, swimming in the haze of summer heat. For a moment he did not
speak, but presently he said, sighing,
“You know but little of my life, my son. I, too, loved in my youth.
Does that surprise you? Yes, it is hard to imagine that old men have
ever been in love, swept by the flames of passion and of sorrow. And
sometimes it is hard for the old to remember how it goes with the young
men, with their joy, and their pain.
“I, too, was young like you, Jonah. Do you think your heart is the
first to break? Other hearts have broken before; and other men have
wept, as you are weeping. I know; for I, too, wept, Jonah, my son.”
He was silent. Jonah took the old man’s trembling hand between his two
brown palms. “I am sorry,” he said. And he remained respectfully silent.
“But, Naaman,” he broke out at last, “what then is holy here on earth?”
Naaman replied gently and inexorably, “My son, the love of earth is
holy, the love that God bears the least of His creatures, without
desire, without envy, and without malice. That mercy and generosity
with which the sun warms and the soil nourishes its flowers and trees,
is holy; all that gives of itself, without reason, without measure, and
without return. For that is the way of God; it is the way of the One,
from which all things spring, to which all things return. Go back to
the desert, Jonah; go back to the desert, and learn that God is One,
and that His love is holy.”
But Jonah did not understand him. “Yes,” he said. “I shall go back
to the desert, because that is all I can do. But I shall have no
happiness, Naaman; my heart will never be at peace again. There is no
beauty in the world for me now, ever. Oh, Naaman,” he cried suddenly,
clasping his hands together, “if God loves His creatures, how can He
make them suffer so?”
Naaman looked sadly at the young prophet whose face was hidden from
him. “Must you have beauty, too, Jonah?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jonah.
Rising to his feet, he added, “You do not know what it is to love and
to be unhappy.”
And he went home again. As he entered his yard, a green beetle crossed
his path. He went a few steps out of his way in order to tread upon it.
XIV
And so Jonah returned to the desert, to his hut among the rushes in
Golan. As he stood waiting for the ferry to take him across the Jordan,
a party of soldiers coming from Hamath passed him on their way home.
“There is Jonah,” they said, “the prophet. Now we shall have another
war.”
“That is the sort of prophet to have.”
“Hurrah for Jonah.”
But Jonah paid no attention to them. He was thin and deathly tired, and
his eyes, which burned with a deep and weary fire, were fixed on the
distant hills beyond the river. There, Naaman had said, he would have
peace again.
He walked northward through Tob, climbing from the river valley toward
the table-land behind the hills. His heart was heavy, so heavy it
seemed to weigh him down; and he walked slowly. At dusk he found
himself still far from Golan, with a river yet to cross, and near the
little pool at which he had halted on his way to Bethel, months before.
How different life had seemed to him then. Why, it was not the same
thing at all any longer; now it seemed like a dream, without reality,
without anything about it that he could feel.
He sank down and looked around him.
The night came on. The shrill frogs sang together; and the little fox
came out of his hole, and lay down beside Jonah, whom he recognized.
“Ah,” he remarked, as he settled himself comfortably at his side, “here
is the man of God again.”
Jonah let his hand stroke the fox’s soft fur. His face was turned to
the west, and he peered back through the darkness over the way he had
come, as though trying to see again the home he had left. Uncle David,
Aaron--his mother....
He remembered how she had pressed him to her breast as he departed.
“Go, my son,” she had said, “go back to God. He misses you. Here is a
little cake for the journey, and a few silver pieces. They are all I
have. Buy yourself a coat on the way.”
She had sold her shawl to give him a coat. But he left the silver
pieces in a pot before the oven. He wanted nothing, only to forget
the sickness of his heart, the heaviness like a weight of lead in his
breast.
“Cheer up,” she had said at the last; “see, you will forget all this
after a while. There is the storm, and then the sun shines. Do not stay
away too long. Who knows, maybe God will send you home again soon.”
And she had kissed him. No, he would not forget all this soon. Would he
ever forget it? that was what he wondered. And Judith, with her brown
eyes, and the scent of lilies and jasmine in the moonlight....
“O Judith, Judith, how could you do such a thing to me?”
His eyes filled with tears, and he bowed his head.
The fox stirred beneath his hand. “Well, Jonah,” he said sadly, “God is
a raven. I believe that now, since a jackal ate my wife. He could not
very well be a fox, and allow such things; or even an old man with a
beard.”
“Perhaps you are right,” said Jonah in a low tone; “perhaps He is a
raven.”
Hearing this, the Devil, who was going by in the form of a scorpion,
stopped, and said to himself,
“I shall tempt this holy man a little.”
And remembering how Jonah’s quiet and pious spirit had vexed him in the
past, Satan considered how best to be revenged on the prophet.
“There is nothing like an odor,” he thought, “to hurt the memory.”
And he changed himself into a jasmine vine. The unwilling night wind,
trembling and sighing, carried the fragrance of its blossoms toward
Jonah, who shivered as though with cold.
“Ak,” he thought, “I can never forget.”
And staring with wide eyes at the west, he saw again the garden, with
the moonlight falling through the leaves like honey; heard the voices
of the old men under the trees, the whispers of lovers, and laughter,
like a sound of flutes; felt on his hand the touch of her fingers....
Judith’s....
“What a beautiful night.... It makes me sad. Why does it make me sad,
Jonah?
“Listen ... there’s a bird singing. Just think, in the moonlight; isn’t
it sweet, Jonah? This is beauty, isn’t it.
“I could stay here forever.”
“Oh, Judith, Judith....”
“There is a smell of sulphur here,” said the fox, wrinkling up his nose.
But Jonah did not hear him. Something was hurting in his throat. He
sprang to his feet, and took a deep breath. “Look,” he cried out to
God, “look; it is I, Jonah.”
And he stood there, with bowed head, in the silence.
“This is very good,” said Satan to himself.
After thinking for a moment, the Arch-Demon decided to become a woman
with brown eyes and brown hair. She came up to Jonah out of the
darkness, timidly, draped in her shawls. “Well, Jonah,” she said, “here
is the desert. See how quiet it is; what peace, what beauty. How happy
we shall be here.”
“Go away,” cried Jonah, throwing out his hands in front of his face,
“go away.”
“Why do you want me to go away?” asked the woman quietly. “Have I not
come all this long way with you, as you wished? Am I not your love,
tender and gentle and kind? Come, let me make you happy.”
And as Jonah stood trembling, unable to reply, she continued in her
soft voice,
“Are you not young, Jonah, and lonely? The young ought not to be
lonely. See how beautiful the night is with its stars, its clouds, half
seen, half guessed, how the music of the wind rises over the desert and
sings in the hills, softly, softly. It is a night for love, Jonah, for
young hearts beating each to each in the silence, in the darkness. That
is what life is for, Jonah, for lips to kiss, for hands to fondle....
There is no beauty like mine, Jonah, no voice like mine to hurt your
heart so, no hands like mine to hold your face tenderly, to kiss your
mouth, Jonah, and your tired eyes, your mouth and your eyes....
“And you in your little hut, all alone among the rushes, all alone,
Jonah, all alone....
“You will always be alone now, summer and winter, winter and summer,
your pillow the earth, harder and colder than my arms; only the song of
birds and the sound of rain in your ears.... And you will never see me
again, Jonah, never hold my young white beauty close to your breast,
never feel, as other men, love singing in your heart, and peace folding
down upon your eyes. You will be all alone, Jonah, with no one to tell
the secret things in your heart to at the set of sun, at the rise of
moon ... until at last, old and sleepy, you take my single kiss with
you into the darkness ... alone in the darkness too, Jonah ... alone in
the darkness....”
“O God,” cried Jonah, sobbing, “help me, help me.”
“God will not help you now,” said the woman.
The drowsy fragrance of her body spread through the night. “Come,” she
said, holding out her arms to him.
“God cannot help you now, my poor Jonah.”
Jonah took a step forward, and fell upon his knees. And then, one by
one far off and near, the demons of the desert broke into laughter,
wild peals of laughter, bitter and full of pain, cruel and without pity.
“Ha, ha, ha.”
“Alone, alone....”
“God cannot help you now.”
Under that mocking clamor, Jonah swayed like a reed, beaten to the
earth, his face hidden in his hands. And then, at last, when it seemed
to him as though he could bear no more, the terrible laughter stopped.
There was a cry, and then silence.
Jonah got up and looked around him. Nothing was to be seen; the woman
had vanished.
The little fox had run forward, and seized the demon by the leg. Once
again the desert was filled with a holy peace, as though brooding
beneath the wings of angels.
“One can at least always help oneself,” remarked the fox.
He lay down next to Jonah with a contented sigh. And presently the man
and the fox fell asleep together.
In her kitchen at home, Deborah sat praying for her son. She prayed
that God would be kind to him. “He is only a boy,” she said; “do not
ask him to behave like a man. Watch over him a little. I do not ask for
anything for myself. I am an old woman, and my heart was broken long
ago. But he is so young ... leave a little of his heart unbroken.”
She lifted up her eyes full of tears. “Leave me my son,” she said.
And Judith, at her window in Tyre, knelt with a pale and weary face,