Mikhail Naimy was born in Baskinta, a town in central Lebanon sitting high on the slope of majestic Mt Sannin and overlooking the Eastern Mediterranean. He was the third in a Greek Orthodox family of five brothers and one sister. His education took him from his village school, run by a Russian mission, to the Russian Teachers’ Institute in Nazareth, Palestine, then to the Theological Seminary in Poltava, Russia, and finally to the University of Washington, USA, where in 1916 he obtained degrees in Liberal Arts and Law. In the same year he moved to New York, where he founded, with his close friend, Kahlil Gibran, a dynamic movement for the rejuvenation of Arabic literature.
After Gibran’s death and after twenty years of continuous life in America, interrupted by only one year of service (1917–1918), as a soldier in the American Army in France, Naimy returned to his picturesque Baskinta in Lebanon, where he dedicated himself entirely, until his death in 1988, to contemplation and writing on the deeper meaning of life. His thirty-one works are acclaimed as classics across the entire Arabic-speaking world and in many other languages. To the English-speaking world, Naimy is known mainly through The Book of Mirdad, which is now also available in most European languages. Other works in English by Naimy are: Memoirs of a Vagrant Soul, or Pitted Face, Till We Meet and his biography of Kahlil Gibran, who was for sixteen years his intimate friend and companion in New York.
By the same author
Memoirs of a Vagrant Soul
Till We Meet
Kahlil Gibran: His Life and His Work
The strange story of a monastery
which was once called the Ark
Mikhail Naimy
Foreword
The Bound Abbot
Flint Slope
The Keeper of the Book
1 Mirdad unveils himself, and speaks on Veils and Seals
2 On the Creative Word. I is the Source and Centre of all things
3 The Holy Triune and the Perfect Balance
4 Man is a God in Swaddling-bands
5 On Crucibles and Cribbles. God’s Word and Man’s
6 On Master and Servant. Companions give opinions of Mirdad
7 Micayon and Naronda hold a nocturnal chat with Mirdad who hints to them of the coming Flood and bids them to be ready
8 The Seven seek Mirdad in the Aerie where he warns them of doing things in the dark
9 The way to Painless Life. Companions would know if Mirdad be the Stowaway
10 On Judgment and the Judgment Day
11 Love is the Law of God. Mirdad divines estrangement between two companions, calls for harp and sings hymn of the New Ark
12 On Creative Silence. Speech is at best an honest lie
13 On Prayer
14 The Colloquy between two Archangels, and the Colloquy between two Archdemons at the timeless birth of Man
15 Shamadam makes an effort to put Mirdad out of the Ark. The Master speaks of insulting and being insulted, and of containing the World in Holy Understanding
16 On Creditors and Debtors. What is Money? Rustidion acquitted of his Debt to the Ark
17 Shamadam resorts to Bribery in his fight against Mirdad
18 Mirdad divines the death of Himbal’s Father and the circumstances thereof. He speaks of Death. Time is the greatest Juggler. The Wheel of Time, its Rim and its Axis
19 Logic and Faith. Self-denial is self-assertion. How to arrest the Wheel of Time. Weeping and Laughing
20 Where do we go after we die? On Repentance
21 The Holy Omniwill. Why things happen as they do and when they do
22 Mirdad relieves Zamora of his Secret, and speaks of the Male and the Female, of Marriage, of Celibacy and of the Overcomer
23 Mirdad heals Sim-Sim, and speaks on Old Age
24 Is it lawful to kill to eat?
25 Day of the Vine and the Preparation therefor. Mirdad found missing on the eve thereof
26 Mirdad harangues the Pilgrims to the Day of the Vine and relieves the Ark of some dead weight
27 Should Truth be preached to all, or to the Chosen Few? Mirdad reveals the Secret of his disappearance on the eve of the Day of the Vine and speaks on Counterfeit Authority
28 Prince of Bethar appears with Shamadam at the Aerie. The Colloquy between the Prince and Mirdad on War and Peace. Mirdad is trapped by Shamadam
29 Shamadam vainly tries to win the Companions over to himself. Mirdad miraculously returns and gives all Companions but Shamadam, the Kiss of Faith
30 Micayon’s Dream revealed by the Master
31 The Great Nostalgia
32 On Sin and the shedding of the Fig-Leaf Aprons
33 On Night – The Peerless Singer
34 On the Mother Ovum
35 Sparks upon the Godward Path
36 Day of the Ark and its Rituals. The Message from the Prince of Bethar about the Living Lamp
37 The Master warns the Crowds of the Flood of Fire and Blood, points the Way of Escape, and launches his Ark
There are, in essence, two kinds of mysticism: a mysticism that teaches the way to transcendence and union with the Light alone, and an ‘evolutionary mysticism’, which honors the union with the transcendent but which stresses the birth of the divine in matter that can take place as its transforming grace. History has shown us that the first kind of mysticism can co-exist effortlessly with hierarchy, inequality and injustice, because in its vision the world is seen and known as either inevitably flawed or as an illusion, with the only refuge possible being a transcendent freedom from it.
In the second kind of mysticism, we are all challenged to go on a difficult and mysterious path of constant transformation of our entire being and action, so as to embody the divine more and more completely and to be agents of an Evolutionary Will that longs to transfigure all conditions of life on earth. This second, ‘evolutionary’, kind of mysticism has always been a scandal to the orthodoxies of the first kind, and whilst its tremendous secret (that humanity is an unfinished adventure, with all kinds of evolutionary transformations possible through its innate divine nature) has always been experienced by a few mystics in all traditions – by Kabbalists, in Judaism, certain secret schools of Hindu Tantrism, the Jesus of the Gospel of Thomas and the Christian Orthodox mystics who underwent ‘theosis’ or ‘transfiguration’ –its great liberating truths are still too little known.
That this should be so is especially tragic in a time like ours, when humanity is going through an unprecedented evolutionary crisis, on the outcome of which its survival depends – a crisis that can be successfully negotiated only if its true meaning is understood and if its devastating demand for a complete transformation of human nature and action on a massive scale is faced without flinching. Our evolutionary crisis is both a necessary death of all our collective fantasies of human uniqueness and our right to dominate and destroy nature, and also, simultaneously, a birth of a wholly new way of being and doing everything, far more humble and also far more powerful than anything we have yet lived or imagined, because it is aligned with divine will. The clue to knowing and understanding this lies in the pioneering testimony of the great evolutionary mystics who refused the consolations of purely transcendental mysticism and dared to plunge into the turbulent unfolding mystery of the divine birth in matter, with History as its wild midwife.
It is in the twentieth century that ‘evolutionary mysticism’ began to find its truest and most potent voice, as if in divinely inspired response to the growing barbarism and destructiveness of human action. Sri Aurobindo, Teilhard De Chardin and Father Bede Griffiths all proclaimed, in different terms but with one voice, that an unprecedented crisis was opening up an unprecedented opportunity, and that the growing ‘dark night’ of our species – obvious in war, genocide and environmental matricide –heralded potentially not extinction but transfiguration: a transfiguration by divine grace of the very terms of human nature. Each of these brave and wise pioneers knew that such a transfiguration was not inevitable (it would have to be earned through a concentrated intensity of devotion, passion, faith, discipline and sacredly inspired action) but was possible, because each of them was living its divinising mystery in the core of their hearts, souls, minds and bodies.
Mikhail Naimy was one of the most gifted and eloquent of these evolutionary pioneers, and The Book of Mirdad is one of the masterpieces of ‘evolutionary mysticism’, inspired as it is by a radical and all-comprehensive vision both of the Divine and of a potentially divinized humanity. Naimy writes, ‘As a living branch of a living vine, when buried in the ground, strikes root and ultimately becomes an independent grape-bearing vine like its mother with which it remains connected, so shall Man, the living branch of the Vine Divine, when buried in the soil of its divinity, become a God, remaining permanently one with God.’
Do not be deterred by the fustian and sometimes outdated esoteric ‘scaffolding’ of The Book of Mirdad. Its vision of humanity capable of overcoming all self-limitation and co- creating a new world out of the smoking ashes of the old is essential for our time.
There are six characteristics that mark authentic evolutionary mysticism:
• a celebration of the divine as both fully transcendent and fully immanent;
• a glorying in the essential divinity of humanity;
• a profound knowledge of reality as an alchemical cauldron of opposites in which death can prepare birth, evil a wiser good, and catastrophe a new vision of order;
• an unflinching look at the inner shadow of humanity – its cowardice, greed, delusion and hubris – and at the destructive shadow of the outer institutions it has created from its addictions;
• an awareness of the sacred androgyny of the new human born from a fusion of matter and spirit, masculine and feminine; and
• a rugged understanding that for an evolutionary leap to be possible, all consolations and comforts will have to be risked in an adventure, the end of which cannot be foreseen.
Careful readers of The Book of Mirdad will find all of these themes intricately woven in the text, with an authority and lived passion of conviction that makes page after page brilliant with the dawn of a New Creation. Naimy was at once an ecstatic visionary, a fierce psychological realist, a political radical and a passionate opponent of any dogma, religious or scientific, that keeps humanity imprisoned in a limited vision of itself and so doomed to repeat itself until its own hidden self-pessimism explodes in a crisis of extinction. In Naimy’s work, Nietzsche, Marx and the exalted knowledge of a Rumi or Meister Eckhart are fused in a unique and stunning challenge to all conventional understanding and in eloquence all his own.
It is one of the greatest strengths of Naimy’s vision that he fully understood how terrifying the transition to the new humanity must necessarily be. As he writes: ‘To tear men free of their nets, their very flesh must needs be torn; their very bone must be crushed. And men themselves shall do the tearing and the crushing. When the lids are lifted – as surely they shall be – and when the pots give out whatever they contain – as surely they shall do – where would men hide their shame and wither would they flee? In that day the living shall have envy of the dead and the dead shall curse the living’. As we, at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, experience the perfect storm of a series of interlinked crises – environmental, cultural, economic, political – and begin to understand what horrors may be in store for us, these words of Naimy’s have a chilling ring and we ignore their agonized prophetic warning at our peril.
The apocalyptic prophet in Naimy, however, was balanced by the ecstatic visionary of a New Creation. Whilst he does not flinch from the dangers and price of evolutionary transformation, he also unhesitantly proclaims its radiant possibility and the laws of discipline, radical compassion in action and humble devotion that would engender it. It is clear to many of us that the ‘dark night of the species’ ahead will be excruciating and extremely dangerous; knowing that, however, need not destroy our strength or diminish a hope that is founded in unshakable faith, for, as Naimy writes, ‘No fraction of Himself did God endow you with – for He is unfractionable; but with His Godhood entire, indivisible, unspeakable did He endow you all. What greater heritage can you aspire to have? And who, or what, can hinder you except your own timidity and blindness?’
It is this ‘timidity and blindness’ that are humanity’s greatest blocks to rising up to meet the challenge of our crisis. Naimy is clear that all those who risk the evolutionary adventure will have to endure sometimes atrocious difficulty. He writes ‘The prideridden and intoxicated world shall heap up injuries upon your heads and shall unleash on you the blood thirsty hounds of its tattered laws, its putrid creeds and moldy honors. It shall proclaim you enemies of order and agents of chaos and doom.’ Naimy also knew, however, that to those who risk embodying the divine, tremendous powers both of endurance and of unconditional compassion are given. As he writes, ‘Let not your hearts be faint. But like the sea be broad and deep, and give a blessing unto him that gives you but a curse. And like the earth be generous and calm, and turn impurities of men’s hearts into pure health and beauty. And like the air be supple and free. The sword that will wound you will finally tarnish and rust. The arm that would harm you will finally weary and halt. And Understanding shall carry the day’.
It is with the hope grounded in this understanding that The Book of Mirdad can guide us and inspire us. And it is with this mystical and prophetic hope that we all now need to inflame ourselves, to set about the difficult inner work that must infuse with its wisdom all our outer actions for us to be able to save ourselves and our world. Read The Book of Mirdad and prepare yourself for the storms and victories ahead.
Andrew Harvey
Oak Park, Illinois
2010
In the Milky Mountains, upon the lofty summit known as Altar Peak, stand the spacious and sombre ruins of a monastery once famous as THE ARK. Traditions would link it with an antiquity so hoary as the Flood.
Numerous legends have been woven about the Ark; but the one most current on the tongues of local mountaineers among whom I chanced to spend a certain summer in the shade of Altar Peak is the following:
Many years after the great Deluge Noah and his family, and his family’s increase, drifted into the Milky Mountains where they found fertile valleys, abundant streams and a most equable climate. There they decided to settle.
When Noah felt his days drawing to an end he called unto him his son Sam who was a dreamer and a man of visions like himself, and spoke unto him saying:
‘Behold, my son. Your father’s harvest of years has been exceeding rich. Now is the last sheaf ready for the sickle. You and your brothers, and your children and your children’s children shall re-people the bereaved Earth, and your seed shall be as the sand of the sea, according to God’s promise unto me.
‘Yet a certain fear besets my flickering days. It is that men shall in time forget the Flood and the lusts and wickednesses that brought it on. They shall also forget the Ark and the Faith that bore it in triumph for fifty and one hundred days over the furies of the revengeful deeps. Nor shall they be mindful of the New Life that issued of that Faith whereof they shall be the fruit.
‘Lest they forget, I bid you, my son, to build an altar upon the highest peak in these mountains, which peak shall henceforth be known as Altar Peak. I bid you further build an house around that altar, which house shall correspond in all details to the ark, but in much reduced dimensions, and shall be known as The Ark.
‘Upon that altar I propose to offer my last thanks offering. And from the fire I shall kindle thereon I bid you keep a light perpetually burning. As to the house, you shall make of it a sanctuary for a small community of chosen men whose number shall never exceed nine, nor ever be less than nine. They shall be known as Ark Companions. When one of them dies, God will immediately provide another in his stead. They shall not leave the sanctuary, but shall be cloistered therein all their days, practising all the austerities of the Mother Ark, keeping the fire of faith burning and calling unto The Highest for guidance to themselves and to their fellow-men. Their bodily needs shall be provided them by the charity of the faithful.’
Sam, who had hung upon each syllable of his father’s words, interrupted him to know the reason for the number nine – no more, no less. And the age-burdened patriarch explaining said:
‘That is, my son, the number of those who sailed the Ark.’
But Sam could count no more than eight: His father and mother, himself and his wife, and his two brothers and their wives. Therefore was he much perplexed at his father’s words. And Noah, perceiving his son’s perplexity, explained further:
‘Behold, I reveal unto you a great secret, my son. The ninth person was a stowaway, known and seen by me alone. He was my constant companion and my helmsman. Ask me no more of him, but fail not to make room for him in your sanctuary. These are my wishes, Sam, my son. See you to them.’
And Sam did according as his father commanded.
When Noah was gathered unto his fathers, his children buried him under the altar in the Ark which for ages thereafter continued to be, in deed and in spirit, the very sanctuary conceived and ordained by the venerable conqueror of the Flood.
In the course of centuries, however, the Ark began, by and by, to accept donations from the faithful far in excess of its needs. As a result it grew richer and richer every year in lands, in silver and gold, and in precious stones.
A few generations ago when one of the Nine had just passed away a stranger came to the gates and asked to be admitted into the community. According to the ancient traditions of the Ark which had never been violated the stranger should have been accepted at once, being the first to ask for admittance immediately following upon a companion’s death. But the Senior, as the abbot of the Ark was called, chanced at the time to be a wilful, worldly-minded and hard-hearted man. He did not like the stranger’s appearance who was naked, famished and covered with wounds; and he told him that he was unworthy of admittance into the community.
The stranger insisted on being admitted, and this insistence on his part so infuriated the Senior that he bade him leave the grounds in haste. But the stranger was persuasive and would not be sent away. In the end he prevailed upon the Senior to take him in as a servant.
Long did the Senior wait thereafter upon Providence to send a companion in place of the one who died. But no man came. Thus, for the first time in its history, the Ark housed eight companions and a servant.
Seven years passed, and the monastery grew so rich that no one could assess its riches. It owned all the lands and villages for miles and miles about. The Senior was very happy, and became well disposed towards the stranger believing him to have brought ‘good luck’ to the Ark.
At the dawn of the eighth year, however, things began to change swiftly. The erstwhile peaceful community was in ferment. The clever Senior soon divined that the stranger was the cause, and decided to put him out. But alas, it was too late. The monks, under his leadership, were no longer amenable to any rule or reason. In two years they gave away all the properties of the monastery, personal and real. The monastery’s innumerable tenants they made freeholders. At the third year they deserted the monastery. And what is more horrifying, the stranger laid a curse upon the Senior whereby he is bound to the grounds of the monastery and made dumb until this day.
Thus runs the legend.
There was no dearth of eyewitnesses who assured me that on many occasions – sometimes by day and sometimes by night – they had seen the Senior wandering about the grounds of the deserted and now much ruined monastery. Yet none was ever able to force a single word out of his lips. Moreover, each time he felt the presence of any man or woman he would quickly disappear no one knew where.
I confess that this story robbed me of my rest. The vision of a solitary monk – or even his shadow – wandering for many years in and about the courts of so ancient a sanctuary, upon a peak so desolate as Altar Peak, was too haunting to chase away. It teased my eyes; it smote my thoughts; it lashed my blood; it goaded my flesh and bone.
At last I said, I would ascend the mountain.
Facing the sea to the west and rising many thousands of feet above it, with a front broad, steep and craggy, Altar Peak appeared from a distance defying and forbidding. Yet two reasonably safe accesses were pointed out to me, both tortuous narrow paths and skirting many precipices – one from the south, another from the north. I decided to take neither. Between the two, descending directly from the summit and reaching almost to its very base, I could discern a narrow, smooth-faced slope which appeared to me as the road royal to the peak. It attracted me with an uncanny force, and I determined to make it my road.
When I revealed my determination to one of the local mountaineers he fixed me with two flaming eyes, and striking his hands together, shouted in terror,
‘Flint Slope? Never be so foolish as to give your life away so cheap. Many have attempted it before you, but none ever returned to tell the tale. Flint Slope? – Never, never!’
With this he insisted on guiding me up the mountain. But I politely declined his help; I cannot explain why his terror had a reverse effect on me. Instead of deterring me it spurred me on and fixed me firmer than before in my purpose.
Of a certain morn, just as darkness was graying into light, I shook the night’s dreams off my eyelids, and grasping my staff, with seven loaves of bread, I struck for Flint Slope. The low breath of the expiring night, the quick pulse of the day being born, a gnawing longing to face the mystery of the bound monk, and a still more gnawing one to unyoke myself from myself at least for a moment, no matter how brief, seemed to lend wings to my feet and buoyancy to my blood.
I began my journey with a song in my heart and a firm determination in my soul. But when, after a long and joyous march, I reached the lower end of the Slope and attempted to scale it with my eyes, I quietly swallowed my song. What appeared to me from a distance a straight, smooth, ribbon-like roadbed now stretched before me broad, and steep, and high, and unconquerable. So far as my eye could reach upward and sideward I could see nothing but broken flint of various sizes and shapes, the smallest chip a sharp needle or a whetted blade. Not a trace of life anywhere. A shroud so sombre as to be awe-inspiring hung over all the landscape about, while the summit was not to be glimpsed. Yet would I not be deterred.
With the eyes of the good man who warned me against the slope still flaming on my face, I called my determination forth and began my upward march. Soon, however, I realized that my feet alone could advance me no great distance; for the flint kept slipping from under them creating a horrific sound like a million throats labouring in a death throttle. To make any headway I had to dig my hands and knees, as well as my toes, in the mobile flint. How I wished then I had the agility of a goat!
Up and up I crawled in a zigzag, giving myself no rest. For I began to fear that night would overtake me before I reached my goal. To retreat was far from my mind.
The day was well nigh spent when I felt a sudden attack of hunger. Till then I had no thought of food or drink. The loaves of bread which I had tied in a handkerchief about my waist were too precious indeed to be valued at that moment. I untied them and was about to break the first morsel when the sound of a bell and what seemed like the wailing of a reed flute struck my ears. Nothing could be more startling in that flint-hoofed desolation.
Presently I saw a great black bellwether appear on a ridge to my right. Before I could catch my breath goats surrounded me on all sides, the flint crashing under their feet as under mine, but producing a much less horrifying sound. As though by invitation, the goats, led by the wether, dashed at my bread and would have snatched it from my hands had it not been for the voice of their shepherd who – I know not how and whence – appeared to be at my elbow. He was a youth of striking appearance – tall, strong and radiant. A loin skin was his only raiment, and the reed flute in his hand his only weapon:
‘My bellwether is a spoiled goat’, said he softly and smilingly. ‘I feed him bread whenever I have it. But no bread-eating creatures have passed here in many, many moons.’ Then turning to his leading goat,‘Do you see how good Fortune provides, my faithful bellwether? Never despair of Fortune.’
Whereupon he reached down and took a loaf. Believing that he was hungry I said to him very gently and very sincerely,
‘We will share this frugal meal. There is enough bread for both of us – and for the bellwether.’
To my almost paralysing astonishment he threw the first loaf to the goats, then the second and third, and so until the seventh, taking a bite of each for himself. I was thunderstruck, and anger began to tear my chest. Yet realizing my helplessness, I quieted my anger in a measure, and turning a puzzled eye upon the goatherd said half--begging, half-reproaching,
‘Now, that you have fed a hungry man’s bread to your goats, would you not feed him some of their milk?’
‘My goats’ milk is poison to fools; and I would not have any of my goats guilty of taking even a fool’s life.’
‘But wherein am I a fool?’
‘In that you take seven loaves of bread for a seven lives’ journey.’
‘Should I have taken seven thousand, then?’
‘Not even one.’
‘To go provisionless on such a long journey – is that what you advise?’
‘The way that provides not for the wayfarer is no way to fare upon.’
‘Would you have me eat flint for bread and drink my sweat for water?’
‘Your flesh is food sufficient, and your blood is drink sufficient. There is the way besides.’
‘You mock me, goatherd, overmuch. Yet would I not return your mockery. Whoever eats of my bread, although he leave me famished the same becomes my brother. The day is slipping down the mountain, and I must be on my way. Would you not tell me if I be still far from the summit?’
‘You are too near Oblivion.’
With this he put the flute to his lips and marched off to the weird notes of a tune which sounded like a plaint from the nether worlds. The bellwether followed, and after him the rest of the goats. For a long space I could hear the crashing of the flint and the bleating of the goats mixed with the wailing of the flute.
Having entirely forgotten my hunger, I began to rebuild what the goatherd had destroyed of my energy and determination. If night were to find me in that dismal mass of flowing flint, I must seek me a place where I could stretch my tired bones without fear of rolling down the Slope. So I resumed my crawling. Looking down the mountain I could hardly believe that I had risen so high. The lower end of the Slope was no longer in sight. While the summit seemed almost within reach.
By nightfall I came to a group of rocks forming a kind of grotto. Although the grotto overhung an abyss whose bottom heaved with dreary, dark shadows, I decided to make it my lodging for the night.
My footgear was in shreds and heavily stained with blood. As I attempted to remove it I found that my skin had clung to it tightly, as if glued. The palms of my hands were covered with red furrows. The nails were like the edge of a bark torn off a dead tree. My clothes had donated their better parts to the sharp flints. My head was swelling with sleep. It seemed to contain no thought of anything else.
How long I had been asleep – a moment, an hour, or an eternity, I do not know. But I awakened feeling some force pulling at my sleeve. Sitting up, startled and sleep-dazed, I beheld a young maiden standing in front of me with a dimlighted lantern in hand. She was entirely naked and most delicately beauteous of face and form. Pulling at my jacket sleeve was an old woman as ugly as the maiden was beautiful. A cold shiver shook me from head to foot.
‘Do you see how good Fortune provides, my sweet child?’, the woman was saying as she half-pulled the jacket off my shoulders. ‘Never despair of Fortune.’
I was tongue-tied and made no effort to speak, still less to resist. In vain I called upon my will. It seemed to have deserted me. So utterly powerless was I in the old woman’s hands, although I could blow her and her child out of the grotto if I so wished. But I could not even wish, nor did I have the power to blow.
Not content with the jacket alone, the woman proceeded to undress me further until I was entirely naked. As she undressed me she would hand each garment to the maiden who would put it on herself. The shadow of my naked body thrown against the wall of the grotto, together with the two women’s tattered shadows, filled me with fright and disgust. I watched without understanding, and stood speechless when speech was most urgent and the only weapon left me in my unsavoury state. At last my tongue was loosened, and I said:
‘If you have lost all shame, old woman, I have not. I am ashamed of my nakedness even before a shameless witch like you. But infinitely more ashamed am I before the maiden’s innocence.’
‘As she wears your shame, so wear her innocence.’
‘What need has a maiden of a weary man’s tattered clothes, and one who is lost in the mountains at such a place, in such a night?’
‘Perhaps to lighten his load. Perhaps to keep her warm. The poor child’s teeth are chattering with cold.’
‘But when cold makes my teeth to click, wherewith shall I chase it away? Have you no mercy in your heart? My clothes are all my possessions in this world.’
‘Less possessing – less possessed.
More possessing – more possessed.
More possessed – less assessed.
Less possessed – more assessed.
Let us be off my child.’
As she took the maiden’s hand and was about to go, a thousand questions pressed upon my mind which I wished to ask her; but only one came to the tip of my tongue:
‘Before you leave, old woman, would you not be kind enough to tell me if I be still far from the summit?’
‘You are on the brink of the Black Pit.’
The lantern light flickered back to me their queer shadows as they stepped out of the grotto and vanished in the sootblack night. A dark chilly wave rushed at me I know not whence. Still darker and more chilly waves followed. The very walls of the grotto seemed to be breathing frost. My teeth chattered, and with them my already muddled thoughts: The goats pasturing on flints, the mocking goatherd, this woman and this maiden; myself naked, bruised, cut, famished, freezing, dazed, in such a grotto, on the edge of such an abyss. Was I near my goal? Will I ever reach it? Will there be an end to this night?
Hardly had I the time to collect myself when I heard the barking of a dog and saw another light, so near, so near – right in the grotto.
‘Do you see how good Fortune provides, my beloved? Never despair of Fortune.’The voice was that of an old, very old man, bearded, bent and shaky in the knees. He was addressing a woman old as himself, toothless, dishevelled and also bent and shaky in the knees. Taking apparently no note of my presence, he continued in the same squeaky voice that seemed to struggle out of his throat:
‘A gorgeous nuptial chamber for our love, and a splendid staff in place of the one you lost. With such a staff you should not stumble any more, my love.’ Saying that, he picked up my staff and handed it to the woman who bent over it in tenderness and stroked it caressingly with her withered hands. Then, as if taking note of me, but always speaking to his companion, he added:
‘The stranger shall depart anon, beloved, and we shall dream our night’s dreams all alone.’