“Was it really you who made the wisest of men fall?” I cried in surprise. “You talk as though you were out of your mind.”
“My old friends think I am out of my mind,” she admitted unhesitatingly. “But I’d rather be out of my mind because of his teaching than continue my former life. He looked straight through me in quite a different way from that of the lewd white-bearded philosophers. I was ashamed of my earlier self. Through his Lord I have been forgiven my sins. I journey on the new way with my eyes closed as if the spirit were guiding me.”
“If that is so,” I said curtly, “then we’ve nothing to say to each other.”
But she kept me there, covering her eyes with her hand.
“Don’t go,” she said. “You were meant to come. Something has hurt your heart. Otherwise you would hardly have come. If you like, I’ll introduce you to the brothers who listened to him and believed in the message of joy.”
This was how I came to know Damaris and some Greeks who used to come the back way to her house in the evenings to discuss Paul and the new teaching. From the start they had been tempted to the synagogue by their curiosity about the Jewish god. They had also read the Jewish holy scripts. The most learned of them was Dionysius, a judge on the Areopagus council who had officially spoken with Paul on his teaching.
To be honest, Dionysius spoke so learnedly and in such an involved way that not even his friends fully understood him, much less fr But he probably meant well with his expositions at our meetings. Damaris listened to him with an absent smile on her face, just as she had probably listened to the other wise men.
After the discussion, Damaris offered us a simple meal and we used to break bread together and drink wine in the name of Christ, for Paul had taught them to do that. But even to a simple meal like this, the Athenians had to give fourfold import. It was Both material and symbolic, morally elevating and a mystical striving toward communion with Christ and a mutual brotherhood between the partakers.
As we talked, I usually looked at Damaris. After the meal I was glad to kiss her, as the Christian custom demands. I had never seen a woman behave so charmingly and yet so naturally as she did. Every movement she made was beautiful and her voice was so lovely that one listened to the tone of it rather than her words. Whatever she did, she did so beautifully that it was sheer pleasure to watch her. Pleasure turned to heartwarming joy as I kissed her soft lips in friendship.
Paul seemed to have given the Greeks some hard nuts to crack. They genuinely enjoyed their discussions. They believed implicitly in Paul, but their own knowledge impelled them to certain reservations. Bewitched by Damaris, I contented myself with just looking at her and allowed the words to pass me by.
They admitted that innermost in every person lies a longing for
God’s clarity, but then they began to dispute about whether this same longing was to be found also in stones, plants, animals and in all higher developments of original forms. Dionysius said that Paul possessed a surprising amount of secret knowledge on the spiritual powers, but seemed to believe that he himself possessed even greater knowledge of the mutual order and rank of the spiritual powers. To me, such talk was like running water.
I made a habit of bringing a little present for Damaris, flowers or preserved fruit, a cake or pure violet honey from Hymettus. She received my gifts looking straight at me with her clear experienced eyes, so that I felt young and clumsy compared to her. I soon noticed that she was constantly in my thoughts and that I was only waiting for those moments when I could go to her again.
I think that during our conversations she taught me more by her behavior than by what she said. Naturally the moment came when I was forced to admit that I was blindly in love with her. I longed for her, her presence, her touch and her kiss, more than anything I had ever longed for before. My earlier love affairs seemed quite insignificant compared with what I could find in her arms. It was as if everything within me had been burned to ashes by thinking about her.
I was appalled at myself. Was this then my judgment, that I should be in love for the rest of my life with a Hetaira who was twenty years older than myself, conscious of all the evil she had experienced? When I realized the truth, I should have liked to Bee from Athens but could no longer do so. I understood the wise men who had sighed for her, and I also understood the philosopher who had committed suicide on her threshold when he had seen the hopelessness of his desire.
I could not flee. I had to go to her. When we again sat together and I looked at her, my lips trembled and hot tears of desire rose in my eyes.
“Damaris,” I whispered. “Forgive me. I’m afraid I love you beyond all reason.”
Damaris looked at me with her clear eyes, put out her hand and brushed my hand with the tips of her fingers. No more was needed to send a terrible shudder rushing through my whole body, and I heard myself give a sobbing sigh.
“I was afraid of this too,” said Damaris. “I have seen it coming. At first it was an innocent cloud on the horizon, but now it is a black thunderstorm flashing inside you. I should have sent you away in time. But I am only a woman, despite everything.”
She rested her chin on her hand to smooth out the wrinkles on her throat and stared straight ahead.
“This always happens,” she said sadly. “The mouth dries up, the tongue trembles and tears come into the eyes.”
She was right. My tongue was trembling in my dry mouth so that I could not say a single word. I threw myself down on my knees in front of her and tried to put my arms around her. But she turned lightly away from me and said, “Remember that I have been offered a thousand gold pieces for a single night. Once a newly rich man sold a silver mine because of me and had to begin his life all over again from poverty.”
“I can get a thousand gold pieces,” I promised, “yes, two thousand if you give me time to speak to the bankers.”
“Sometimes a violet has been enough, if I’ve taken a liking to a handsome youth,” she said. “But we shall not talk about that now. I want no gift from you. I shall give you one myself. That gift is the inconsolable knowledge which all my experience tells me, that physical pleasure is a torture, that it is no real satisfaction, but constantly rouses a desire for an even more terrible satisfaction. Plunging into physical love is like throwing oneself onto red-hot charcoal. My fire is extinguished. I shall never again light the sacrificial flame for someone else’s downfall. Don’t you see that I am ashamed of my former life?”
“You touched my hand with the tips of your fingers,” I whispered, my head bowed and the tears from my eyes falling onto the marble floor.
“That was wrong,” admitted Damaris. “But I wanted to touch you so that you would never forget me. Minutus, my dearest, desire means so very much more than fulfillment. That is a painful but wonderful truth. Believe me, Minutus my dear, if we part now we shall remember nothing but good of each other, and then we’ll never think evil of one another. I have found a new way. Perhaps your way will one day lead to the same eternal happiness as mine.”
But I did not want to understand her.
“Don’t preach at me, woman,” I cried, in a voice hoarse with desire. “I have promised to pay whatever you want.”
Damaris stiffened and gazed at me steadily for a moment. Then she slowly turned very pale and said disdainfully, “As you wish then. Come back tomorrow evening so that I have time to prepare. And don’t blame me afterwards.”
Her promise made my head reel, although the words had an ominous ring to them. I left with trembling knees and, consumed with impatience, I wandered about the city, climbed up to the Acropolis and looked at the wine-dark sea to make the time go by. The following day, I went to the baths and loosened my limbs with exercises in the gymnasium, although every violent movement sent a consuming flame flaring through my body at the thought of Damaris.