A burgher was venting his anger at the weather, heh-heh. … Off to his Sunday lunch, potage, plaice, poultry, pork, pies, puff pastry, pancakes, pass the port, pop the cork, let’s have a bit of a singsong … aah, they’ve spoiled it all, the idiots! Who can eat under these circumstances? The brutes went and hung a war overhead — go on, knock the plate with your fork if you can! And all that on Palm Sunday, if you please! Chose the right day for it, that’s for sure!
Back, in childhood, there blew a close, hot, moist, so-called passion day southerly wind; the sky without a trace of blue, with ragged rapid clouds, the sea lead-gray, mournful … It gave you a foretaste of the Savior’s passion and death. Dom Kuzma had explained at school beforehand that it had been like that, too, during that long-ago week (which we now call the Holy Week) from Palm Sunday, when Jesus had entered Jerusalem, to Holy Saturday, or rather Holy Sunday, Resurrection Day, when He was resurrected. (Melkior was never clear on whether Jesus had been resurrected on Saturday, at the second peal of the bells, or on Sunday, when Easter is celebrated … but nobody dared ask Dom Kuzma). The boys in the white sailor suits, the girls in the white dresses, with braided palm fronds and olive twigs in their hands, under the tall church vaults, in the fragrant smoke of incense, in the sounds of the organ … a grand occasion. Now and again the bishop himself, under his miter, crosier in hand, would serve Mass, the Pontifical, and they would undress him and put on his robes, put his shoes off and on, and Dom Kuzma appeared to be a valet to a lord. Melkior was amazed: how could Dom Kuzma be such a … a nobody, just someone who put the Bishop’s slippers on for him?
But then on Good Friday, when they showed Jesus’ Passion in Church, Dom Kuzma was Jesus! They all shouted in his face: crucify him, crucify him! Annas and Caiaphas the high priests, scribes, customs men, Pharisees and servants in Caiaphas’s palace. … Dost thou answer the high priest so? an officer said to him and slapped him on the cheek. And Dom Kuzma, in a long white robe with a palm branch over a mighty shoulder, his ears jutting out alarmingly, took it all in stride and replied, mild, meek, humble: If I have spoken evil, bear witness to the eviclass="underline" but if well, why smitest thou me? Pilate, the Roman procurator, was the only one who did not shout. He was indeed prepared to release him. What he saw was just a harmless fellow spouting drivel … Art thou the King of the Jews? he asked the poor dreamer with seigneurial irony … he was at a loss for what to do with the crank. And Dom Kuzma again said meekly, humbly: My kingdom is not of this world … Pilate went out to face the Judaean mob: shall I crucify your King? The occupying potentate was mocking the enslaved people divided by political passions. We have no king but Caesar! bellowed the mob mindlessly. Away with this man, and release unto us Barabas! Pilate did as they demanded and washed his hands diplomatically: that was how it was with the dirty business of politics …
Melkior had been incensed by the injustice.
… And Dom Kuzma could have crushed the entire churchful of them with his bare hands … only nobody dared mention anything about his ears!
“It’s all some big business deal or other and spit in my face if it isn’t.” The burgher (he had a gold watch-chain across his belly) was very angry at “this war”: this is only the beginning, there’s no telling what we’re in for next …
“I daresay there are loftier things: after all, people die for their ideals!” The other was disgusted at the vulgar approach: “That’s materialism, that is!” he exclaimed accusingly. “It’s all the rage with the hotheads these days …” he was looking suspiciously at Melkior (or so it seemed to Melkior), this chap’s eavesdropping on our conversation a bit too closely …
“No war has been anything but a business deal since year one, and you can call me a jackass if you like! It was always a case of someone making a bundle … and someone else biting the dust.”
“Oh!” cried the idealist cut to the quick, “and what about the honorable victims, what about the fallen heroes?”
“It’s all about biting the dust, call me an ape if you like. It’s all savagery … wheeling and dealing.”
Melkior was getting off at the next stop. Pity. Will the idealist-warrior spit in his face?
“How many wise men have perished at the hands of savage soldiery? Ever since ancient Greece and Rome. Carthage …”
“Syracuse!” shouted Melkior jumping off the tram. “Archimedes murdered! Lepanto, Cervantes’ arm crippled!”
The tram was already pulling out, the materialist smiled at him behind glass in gratitude for his help.
Arm … the right or the left? Actually cut off … with a sword? Longin Podbipieta. Those were Turks at Lepanto, Damascus sabers … Where’s this Lepanto place anyway? Perhaps he wrote all of Don Quixote with his left hand … and in a dungeon at that, on bread and water. A cripple. Don Miguel Saavedra. “Do you think, gentlemen, that it’s an easy job to inflate a dog?” says the madman in the preface to Part Two. “Do you think, sir, that it’s an easy job to write a book?” adds Don Miguel, the cripple of Lepanto.
He was in front of Enka’s house.
“I have often walked down this street before …” he hummed in a low voice (there was a song that went like that) and halted at the door. What on earth’s the matter with me? He knew there was no reason at all to go upstairs. None at all? — No! he replied resolutely and turned his back to the door.
Yes, but where to? The street is short, empty, morose. Closed in on either side by the questions right? left? He spared each side a contempt-inspired look. Weak motives as motives go: one corner with a sundries shop (a loping deer — Zlatorog soap), the other a stunted bare sapling tied protectively to a pole — authority. Enter motive-following action. Buridan’s ass finally met its death in plenty (the pampered creature), indeed it had two haystacks to choose between (luxury!), but it died for a principle like some heroic character out of Corneille, hail to him! Hail to Buridan’s ass between the two haystacks … whereas I wasn’t given so much as two straws to decide between, not a hollow straw to clutch at …
Numbly he watched the descent of the sparse snowflakes: disappearing before even touching down. The brief life of a snowflake. Flutter and die. And yet, how the duration may seem long to the flake! A life of insubstantial weightlessness, a floating, a white dream on the way from sky to Earth … And the Earth spells the end of that masterpiece, the fallen star made of lacy crystals.
He was looking at the tiny perfection on his sleeve. The minute six-pointed wonder! (All snow stars are six-pointed … it’s presumably prescribed by a celestial canon of beauty.) The white star shining on a dark sky of unworthy cloth. Displaying a peaceful, wise, meek dignity of its orderly whiteness in this world of black, disorderly, back-to-savagery things. The Cyclops Polyphemus, the beast, now treads the Earth. You can feel his contagious breath … The tiny white star winkled out, melted into a dewdrop.
Right or left? stirred Melkior. Here are your motives: the Zlatorog soap-ad yellow deer and the stunted young tree next to its warden, the dry, self-righteous pole. He opted for the pole. It was after all some kind of authority, was that prideful male vertical. It was advancing to meet the events … while the deer (yellow to boot!) was rearing in panicky flight, a clear picture of fear, run for your life!
Melkior approached the runty sapling: all of its buds were still firmly closed, the little one was still afraid to face the world. He patted the pole: hello, Stoic! Seneca, in burning Rome!