Chapter 26 - The drunkard

I woke up in the old fishing net that went between the two willows. My heart was pounding, as if I were running fast, because I had dreamed of how I had changed from a proud and free lion into a desert cat that had fallen into a trap. This was not pleasant, for a cat was an insignificant animal not even mentioned in the sacred books, while a lot of pigs had been given that here.

It was an hour before dawn when the bird-headed Tot released the sun from its beak, tired of having held her all night, in the sky above the eastern mountains bathed in a saffron yellow light.

I got up and sat down, trying to shake off the muddle of the dream, took a few deep breaths of the fresh outdoor air, stretched out my arms and pulled myself up to look at the lake's wrinkle-less, dark-gray expanse of water. The shore was deserted, not a sound came from the town. My students were sleeping in the barn.

Sometimes when you woke up you felt like an insane madman, disembarked in an unfamiliar port, having to get used to everything all over again.

I recalled my dream in my memory, yesterday's meeting with the nagids, and mused that the word "love" I had dreamt amidst the other special words had the numerical value "13. In the form of the Indian numeral 13, it resembled the high priest Caiaphas, I thought with a yawn. I did dream of him a lot these days, in all sorts of hypostases. So did Caiaphas equate to love?

I always went to bed reluctantly. Self-baked, a person had only weak control over the flow of his own thoughts, but in sleep he simply became a plaything in the clutches of evil chimeras. For me, sinking into sleep was the price of being able to make a single independent decision; you only had to fall asleep or immediately the Calydonian boar began to play into me with tiresome visions and force me to solve painful riddles. Or you suddenly ended up on top of an iceberg, in the middle of a darkness from the front yard out, forced to shiver in the cold to create a new world out of your own doubts and a handful of letters.

Therefore, I was particularly glad of the quiet morning moments therein separating a whole day from a new sinking into the abyss of night, unencumbered by great cares. The hours of the day were a respite from yet another descent into a turbulent darkness that was probably worse than death, for death meant before all else, carefreeness.

I closed my eyes again and thought that hand in my net about where I would fill the day with me. Recently, the boss of a paint factory had asked me to lunch, and I thought I might look him up. He must have had some kind of ailment. Well, I will help him, I decided, but I also have a good meal; I don't take my apprentices and paints because modestly, I don't have to charge him for his generosity.

All along the lake everything came alive. Women with bare legs and sun-tanned faces had been grinding flour and baking the morning bread, and the smell that came to me from it testified that everything was fine, everything as always, no hunger, disease or war. The richly scaled people of Galilee went to work: one built a boat, another salted fish or modeled a bowl, a third made fire in his smithy. I was always in awe of blacksmiths, after all, these priests of the manly Demiurge were engaged in something magical, they purified and tamed the metal that owed no one anything left to work for man.

The day passed, the salted fish was put into barrels and sent to Tarichaea, the town nearby, with the largest market in the area (the salted fish from this lake enjoys one from far beyond the borders of Galilee), the metal would serve the people obediently, in the form of jewelry, instruments and weapons, and who did, I thought, perhaps the artisan just today made the tip of the lens that would be put under my ribs by order of the clergy....

Many men began his day with prayer. The Jews prayed only to God because he had created him as Jews, the Romans and the Hellenes to the gods who had made him happy, while a few, on such a beautiful morning, probably performed a sacred ritual devised long ago and emasculated themselves in honor of Astaroth, with his full-moon face and horns, in order to have the opportunity not to be distracted by the love need of the body and to drink in the heavenly milk the wisdom from her nipples.

It was getting light. The shepherds were hunting. Many to the pastures, and you could hear the tanning of cows. Donkeys stretched their necks and showed their teeth, welcoming the new day, roosters huddled on roofs and fences to raise their morning psalm.

For some, however, the day began with ugly thoughts, black hatred and insatiable sorrow, and the truth was right with these people, who could not be enchanted by anything.

The stars disappeared, the sky of the east was intersected by yellow streaks, the sun appeared, and I watched a small elegant ship under sail across the lake ahead. Not resembling the ferryman's vessel or a fishing boat, it obviously belonged to a wealthy man. I discerned two warriors on board, a red stripe on the mainsail, and understood that it was a vessel belonging to Moshe Stira, a stinking rich merchant from Tiberias, known for having a whole flotilla of different vessels built with which he liked to shuttle back and forth across the lake. Moshe owed his nickname to the scar across his face that he had once suffered in the desert in a scuffle with robber folk.

The warriors on board were his bodyguards, at least the rationale for that is unclear, you didn't have pirates on the Sea of Galilee. From whom were they to protect their master?

Stira probably assumed that those warriors would take the leviathan's tentacles off if the monster wanted to chew up its pleasure boat, I thought. Maybe it would. But if the danger came not from below, not from the side, but from above, from God, no one would come to Stira's defense.

I felt the envy in me, because, I must confess, I also wanted to go out on the lake one morning in my own boat and carefree sip a glass of sweet wine, brought to me by a young mistress, and watch the green shoreline clothed along, burned by poor loons.

There was only one thing wrong with envy, it tormented the mind, but often it was also very useful, because it gave a person a lofty goal to achieve by cheering him up.

Tiberias was a city of boys there educated young people went to, you could easily make a fortune in trade or get a high position at the court of Herod Antipa, if your far snow and beyond was bad. The white stone houses of Tiberias had been built on the site of Jewish tombs, many teachers and law scholars had condemned it, but the Hellenes, on the other hand, immediately realized that it was a favorable place and flocked en masse. Clean streets, an amphitheater, legions of merchants with caravans from all over the world.

There were a few synagogues and, most importantly, a library, built by the scribe Issachar, Antipa's friend, from the king's money. If I had had the means and the opportunity to settle there, in the capital of Galilee, I would have done so irrevocably. Tiberias was the city of the future. But I had better not show up where the king lived who had had John put to death.

Judas came out of the barn sleepily, did a pee by the tree and waved when he saw me. A moment later Simon and Matthias woke up. Andreas and Philippus were not back yet; they were still wandering around somewhere.

We ate something, we had flat barley bread and eggs, while Simon went to town quickly to ask for a jug of sour wine on the spigot in a store. Nobody sifted the wine, bits of spunk crunched between your teeth, but it does get you drunk, and I suddenly felt so good that for a few blessed moments I experienced a true spiritual sobriety, realizing that I was lucky to be alive, healthy and a free man. The lakeside barn seemed to me a dwelling incomparably better than a royal residence, for life in a palace was incompatible with tranquility, that was the way people were. Even Albert, you the most righteous ruler, people would seek to kill you just because the crown happened to be on your head... Yes, I suddenly felt supreme, and in my pupils I saw the best servants in the world, because they did not visit to kill me to take my place.

They thought I was special and they were right, I would never become a will-less man of the crowd, let alone of a group of believers, because every random mass, brought to one under the name of God, was responded to by a gob of words under the name of Kotet, whereas I was always in control of my own words, I took up the black debris of ancient texts and from them struck sparks of love!

To reconcile myself with all things I wanted to smoke if at that moment, but the kif was long gone, only the debt to Venedad remained.

Judas went out fishing with the local fishing people. Simon and Matthew went to earn something extra in town, at the slaughterhouse, whose owner took good care of us and paid for periodic help with copper and oil, while I was visited by a man from Goes-Halav who pretended to be a master shoemaker. He asked me to relieve him of his vinousness. He earned well, had apprentices and orders from substantial people, but he was drowning all his money and, in addition, had an evil drink. He came to me on the advice of his wife, who had tried in vain to fight his malady by cursing and protesting, until someone told her that a healer lived in Capernaum.

I explained to him that he should wait until the full moon, replace an eel with his own hands, dip it in a cup of wine, then drink it and bury that eel under a flowering oleander with the words lech ve kach et cha-tsimaon itcha. And further, I dry him to love his wife a little more intimately, when she was angry not in response also to ignite in wrath, but to calm her down, then a day together would be truly blessed.

At his farewell, he gifted me sandals of refined workmanship, made by himself, and a piece of silk for which Goes-Halav was traditionally famous.

Yes, I was happy to accept gifts from people I helped. I experienced a special feeling: it was as if I didn't deserve all those gifts, because I could easily do the healing, as if I were playing the healer, but sometimes it was really fun, and then suddenly I get gifts for that. I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been able to prophesy and heal... I would have found some other simple means of not starving to death. Maybe I would have collected taxes as a tax collector. Or spoiled rich old Roman women in Bajach or something. Or organized cockfights, in the Town Square shouting things like, "Bet a lepto on the black rooster and you will receive a quodrant, and if you bet on the pied rooster, but no less than the full two quodrants, Aarschot you not, the pied go is smaller but three times as fierce!

But sometimes I stared at the darkness within myself and understood that if the stars and otherwise had melded, I could have become a Roman citizen, held a high status post and plotted intrigues, become corporations in gory dealings and reap hefty profits from proscriptions, trading in gladiators, death penalties, funerals and memorial games. No one was insured against that, there was no spice against fate if you were bright and enterprising.

I knew that the drunkard would heal, you could see it in his eyes, I had read the fear in them. He feared for his life, understood that he had to use his wits and bury those poles under that oleander. But people with too much courage were difficult to cure, often impossible even. Sometimes only fear, that strongest element of all, came to save someone, when it appeared to have dissolved in the crucible of his consciousness. One could reason so long and deeply sensibly about the harmful passions but still die of them, and if the terracotta dragon of fear therefore devoured the fat monkey of reasoning, over to life itself.

Yes, I had cured many drunks, but I never understood how you could be dumb drunk for weeks, because after all, that was only a bell act when you used it at the appropriate time. And if you ever wanted to get seriously drunk, you did have to first take a sip of oil mixed with the juice of betony, then you would stay clear-headed even until the end of the party.

There was another tried and true way to take away noxious thirst. You had to find the nest of an owl, take the eggs out of it, boil them and serve them to a drunkard. From then on, he hated alcoholic beverages and remained clear-headed until his death, because his urges had reached an equilibrium.

Around noon I decided to take a dip in the lake, intending to have lunch at the local dyers immediately afterwards. I threw off my clothes and paddled for a long time over the stony keep, watching the fish, but then I swam far away from the shore and from there I could even see Tiberias, an accumulation of white houses up the mountainside.