Behold, he cometh,
Saith the LORD of hosts.
But who may abide the day of his coming?
And who shall stand when he appeareth?
For he is like a refiner’s fire,
And like fullers’ soap;
Elijah sensed that everything was on him, the whole burden of a world of trouble. He said:
I have been very jealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the children of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant, thrown down Thine altars, and slain Thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.
Is this perhaps God’s gift and mystery, that he puts the world in and on each one of us as if there is no one else? And perhaps Bohemond, with the whole world in him and on him in a way that I can have no idea of, is without even knowing it jealous for the LORD; perhaps he has been appointed by God to call our attention to something, to the fragility of the temples that we daily destroy perhaps.
I sensed that it was important for me to understand, of the many things in my mind, at least one thing well in order to die properly, to let go of life in the right way. I craved to know what at least one of the important persons in my life was to me: Sophia or the tax-collector or Bohemond, the one in my mind called Questing, the angel of death and messenger of God.
Different people look ahead to different things. There were Jews in Antioch who had no doubt whatever that the Messiah was coming. This brute faith seemed a kind of madness to me; their faces seemed coarse with it, their eyes like stones. ‘What?’ I said to them, ‘What will be when the Messiah comes?’
‘The Temple rebuilt!’ they cried, their stone eyes shining, ‘The glory of Israel restored!’
‘The Temple rebuilt!’ I said to them. Suddenly the absurdity of such a fast day as Tisha b’Av became overwhelming to me. To lament year after year, generation after generation, the toppling of stones! Stones that have no enemy, stones in whom God dances impartially for anyone or for no one, dances under whatever name is given, dances whether there is anyone to know of God’s existence or not! What is the toppling of stones to God? Is God overturned with the stones? My people! ‘If you want the Temple rebuilt then go and rebuild it!’ I said. ‘One doesn’t need a Messiah for that, one only needs carpenters and stonemasons and bricklayers.’
‘Don’t be such a fool,’ they said. ‘You know very well that it isn’t just the sticks and stones and bricks of it we’re talking about. Don’t you want the glory of Israel restored?’
‘The glory of Israel has never been lost,’ I said. ‘When you say, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One”, then with those words and with that thought you speak the glory of Israel. To that perception of Oneness nothing can be added and from it nothing can be taken away.’
‘The ancient glory of the Kingdom of David!’ they said.
‘What kind of glory is that?’ I said. ‘Saul slew his hundreds, David slew his thousands, Bohemond the same. Wait, you’ll see glory when Bohemond comes over the wall.’
Their stone eyes glared into mine. Hearing the words that came out of my mouth I realized that I was not of their world, I was no longer even of my own world, I was well on my way to where I am now.
This Elijah who now presented himself to me as enemy and teacher and messenger of God, this Elijah had long lived in my mind as forerunner; I had always pictured him running ahead as he ran ahead of Ahab’s chariot, an athlete strong in his engoddedness, running like an animal and with his running prophesying the God in him; the beauty of his running makes a shout in the desert, a lightning in the sunlight. Elijah the forerunner of the Messiah, Elijah the warden of the covenant, Elijah for whom a chair is placed at circumcisions, Elijah for whom a place is set at the Seder, for whom a glass of wine is poured, for whom the door is left open, Ay! Elijah! Elijah feeling himself alone the covenant-keeper, Elijah with a silence all around him and a still small voice inside him. Elijah who bows himself to the earth and puts his face between his knees and waits for the rain, Elijah who runs away and throws himself aside until the angel of God calls him to action. Elijah fed by angels, fed by ravens, Elijah the magical, the one of us. His guises are many, one doesn’t always know who he is, one doesn’t always recognize him. One must make connexions, must find the combination that he is a part of. By learning to recognize Elijah one learns to recognize Messiah. Here in Antioch the evening of the fourteenth of Nisan in the Jewish year 4858 which is the nineteenth of March in the Christian year 1098 is the Eve of Passover. A place is set, a glas of wine is poured, the door is opened for Elijah. And I know that in this part of the space called time Bohemond is Elijah and for me the taking of Antioch will be the Messiah and Jerusalem both.
Passover has come and gone and the Franks have not come over the walls. The tower we call Evil Eye and Raymond’s tower and Tancred’s tower stare at us through days and nights as if by observation could be known the time when Antioch must fall to these soldiers of Christ who cannot breach the walls of Justinian.
The towers stare, the Franks await God’s will while Karbuqa masses his armies and the reports of his imminent advance come every day with fresh detail and greater numbers. In Antioch the feeling is that of a very long night almost over and daylight almost here. The walls have not been breached, the Franks for all their engines of war and their will of God have not been able to bring the outside into the inside. Some of the people who have crept away from the city now return to take up life and business where they left off. There are many difficulties, many hardships, there are not enough goods to do much business with, but the people of Antioch wait patiently for the city to outlast its besiegers.
April passes and May. Salzedo was wrong: Shavuoth has come and gone and Antioch has not fallen. Here is the beginning of June in the Christian calendar, the end of Sivan in the Jewish one. The new moon of Tammuz will soon be seen, and some of the more old-fashioned Jews of Antioch will address it in the old-fashioned way:
As I dance towards thee,
but cannot touch thee, So shall none of my evil-inclined enemies
be able to reach me.
It is the night of the last of Sivan. I am asleep and I know that I am asleep. I feel like an instrument, like a compass needle quivering to the pull of the north or like a weathercock — yes, that’s how I feel, like a weathercock high, high up on a steeple in a strong wind, my limbs rigidly extended north, south, east, and west but not fixed and still like the directionals of a weathercock; no, I am spinning, spinning through the space called time, over the miles, over the days, weeks, months to the fall of Jerusalem a year from now. My hands and feet burn as if they are on fire, spinning so high in a purple-blue sky, spinning down to the domes of Jerusalem the golden, down to Yerushalayim in the Christian summer of 1099, down to Yerushalayim with a pall of smoke hanging over it and a stench of fire and blood and death.
It is only a little while since the city has been taken, fires are still burning; the streets are slippery with blood and entrails; bodies of men, women, and children, severed limbs and heads are heaped everywhere. The colours of the clothes on the bodies cannot be distinguished, so steeped in blood are they. Some of the bodies still move a little, and groans can be heard.
Many of the Franks are busy with the dead and the near-dead; they cut them open and pull out the entrails, in this way some of them find gold coins. Screams are heard as well as groans, some of the Franks are active with women whom they have not yet killed while others take their pleasure with the dead.