Again pleased to meet you do you remember my name?



The Devil
did not show any fear
at what he
had said ...

He continued to speak.

"Your
Father," he said,
"does not have the right to demand
complete obedience
from His people.
He does not comprehend
that women are creatures different from men
and live with separate
understanding.
Indeed, your Father has
no inkling of women;
His scorn for them is shared by His prophets,
who speak, so they claim,
with His voice.
And they do!
For rarely will He reprimand them!
Look at Yeshayahu!
Tell me that Yeshayahu
does not live in your Father's heart
when he says:
'Because the daughters of Zion are haughty
and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes,
walking and mincing
as they go,
therefore the Lord will smite with a scabbard
the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion,
and the Lord will discover
their secret parts.'
Their secret parts." repeated the Devil.
And he continued to speak
with the words of Isaiah:
"'The Lord will take away their bracelets and bonnets,
the ornaments of the legs, the earrings,
the rings and the nose-jewels,
the fine linen, the hoods and the veils.
And it shall come to pass that instead of sweet smell
there shall be stink;
and instead of a girdle, a rent;
for lovely hair, there shall be baldness,
and burning instead of
beauty.'"

"My Father
was speaking of the nation of Zion," I said.
"So were we
taught."

"No,"
replied the Devil.
"He pretends to speak of the nation of Zion.
But it is women He belittles.
His mighty curses He saves for the men.
When He wishes to address the nation of Israel,
He is speaking only to men:
'The indignation of the Lord is upon all nations,
and His fury upon all their armies:
He hath utterly destroyed them,
He hath delivered them to the slaughter.
Their offal shall come up out of their carcasses
and the mountains shall be melted
with their blood.'
What a rage!
His failures burn in His heart!
Can He suspect that He may not be all-powerful? No!
He does not have enough spirit to say:
'Yes, I have lost, but my soldiers were honest
and fought well.'
No, He is vengeful.
'The palaces will be forsaken,' says Yeshayahu,
'the forts and towers shall be dens forever,
until the Spirit be poured upon us
from on High.'
"But when," asked the Devil,
"will the Spirit be poured upon us?
Your Father would send you forth
to improve the hearts of men when His own heart is caked
with the blood of those He has
slaughtered.
His love of all He has created
is choked by His curses.
His rages may be mighty,
but they do not satisfy His desire.
His language reveals how much He adores
the grandeur He pretends to
despise.
"Tell me that your Father
is not filled with an adoration of women.
Which He hides from Himself!
For He hates their power to entice Him.
Yechezkel knows what is in your Father's heart.
After all, he heard these words from the Lord:
'I swore unto thee and entered into a covenant with thee,
and thou becamest mine.
I washed thee with water; yea,
I thoroughly washed away thy blood,
and I anointed thee with oil.
I clothed thee also in broidered work, and fine linen,
and I covered thee with silk, with ornaments,
and I put bracelets upon thy hands and a chain on thy neck,
and earrings in thine ears,
and a beautiful crown upon thine head.
Thou wast decked with gold and silver;
thou didst eat fine bread,
and honey, and oil; and thou wast exceedingly beautiful,
and thou didst prosper into
a kingdom.
And thy renown went forth among the heathen
for thy beauty which I had put upon thee.' Now," said the Devil,
"hear how He complains!
He is pitiful in His complaints:
'But thou didst trust in thine own beauty,
and played the harlot because of thy renown,
and poured out thy fornications on everyone that passed by,
and multiplied thy whoredoms.
Thou hast also committed fornication with the Egyptians,
thy neighbors, great of flesh;
and hast played the whore also with the Assyrians
because thou wast insatiable.'
"'Wherefore, O harlot, because thy filthiness was poured out,
and thy nakedness discovered, therefore I will gather all thy lovers
with whom thou hast taken pleasure;
and will gather them round about against thee,
and give thee into their hand,
and they shall throw down thine eminent place,
and shall strip thee of thy clothes,
and shall take thy fair jewels and leave thee naked and bare,
and they shall stone thee,
and thrust thee through with their swords.
And they shall burn thy houses with fire,
and execute judgements upon thee in the sight of many women:
and I will cause thee to cease from playing
the harlot.'
"Does all this take place," asked the Devil,
"in order to scorn Yerushalayim? Say rather that your Father's language reeks of
desire."

"Your
words are pollutions."
I hoped to exite enough anger in myself to reply, but I could only repeat:
"Your words are
poisonous."

Satan
replied:
"Your Father's tongue is as ripe with lust
as my own."

I knew
confusion.
Could I deny that my loins had quickened as I listened to the repetition of my Father's
words?

Now
the Devil said:
"You believe that you are sitting on the summit of this mountain,
but we are no longer there. We have risen to a place above the holy places."

His embrace
of my vision was complete.
Now I saw the city of Jerusalem, and it was beneath us.
For we were no longer seated on the mountain.
We were on the highest dome of the Great Temple
in Jerusalem.

I felt vertigo.

At that moment
the Devil said to me,
"Because you are the Son of God, you can feel free to leap!
Cast yourself out.
Your Father's angels
will carry you."

I felt
a temptation to jump.
But, most suddenly, I did not feel as if I were the Son of G*D.
Not yet!

An
abyss
was below me.
And I knew it would be there
for all the generations to come.
Whenever they stood on a height,
they would live in the wind of that unruly spirit
who dwells in our breath and has a terror of the leap.
Now the Devil looked at me again with his dark eyes,
and the points of light within were like a night of stars;
those eyes would promise glory.
"If you stay with your Father you will labor for Him," he said.
"You will be consumed. Jump! You can save yourself.
Jump!"

I
would be smashed.
But would my extinction be brief?
And my return to the living as quick?
The Devil had taken me into him.
By the light in his dark eyes, I knew his speech
even though he said nothing.
If I jumped, the Devil would possess me.
I would have leaped to my death
at his
bidding.

But
at this moment he said aloud,
"You will be reborn. In secret. God will not know.
I have the power
to distract."

He
was telling me of a life to come.
It would be bountiful. "All is mine!" cried Satan
aloud.

Indeed,
greed was godly to him.
Out of crude greed would come works of great power.
"Those who have loyalty to me," said the Devil,
"sit now upon the earth with such command
that they never give vent to those little turds,
fit only for a goat,
that pinch themselves forth from the bony cheeks
of your friend Yochanan. Why, he will not even shit on
the Sabbath!
And on other days he carries a small hoe to cover
his leavings."

And I,
in this same moment,
wondered whether I could leap but not fall.
Could I fly with angels?
By power given to me by the Lord,
could I fly?

Could I know?
Satan stood between my Father and me.
Did he have the power to deny the wings of the angel?
I did not jump.
I wanted to, but I did not dare.
To myself I said,
"I will not serve G*D as a brave son but as a modest one."
That was just.
Had I not spent more than half my life working carefully
with many small movements, equal to equal,
with the small mysteries
of wood?

And now I had an inkling of why G*D had chosen Miryam
and Josef to be my family.
I said, "Get thee hence, Satan."
If my voice was weak,
I repeated it: "Get thee hence, Satan,"
and now my voice had more force.
It was ready to draw upon my the strength that comes
from emptiness.
And I saw the wisdom of the Lord.
For even in fasting is strength,
and that was the greatest strength, and that was the greatest strength one could bring to bear against the Devil inasmuch as he hated emptiness.
Who is more lonely than the Devil?
I had the power at last to look into Satan's eyes and say:
"It is not you I want. It is my Father."
Eeven as I said this, I knew a small but sharp woe.
I was losing something I desired,
and I was losing it
forever.

But Satan
gave a cry like a beast
just wounded by the spear.
"Your Father," he cried, "will destroy His own Creation. For too little!"
And he departed.
And I was left with a vision of angels.
They gathered about me to bathe my eyes.
I slept.
Never before had I known such
exhaustion.

In
the morning
I awoke
to see myself on this same mountain where I had lived for forty days.
Now I was ready to come down.
The road to Nazareth would be long and empty.
Yet for the next day and the next, no brigands attacked.
Which was just as well.
My hour with the Devil had left me spent.
My breath was foul.
Nor did I feel that I had escaped
altogether.

I was,
however, not distraught. For as I marched,
so could I recite the words
of Yeshayahu:
"'Unto us,'" I declared,
"'a child is born;
unto us a son is given;
and the government shall be upon his shoulders;
and his name shall be called wonderful,
counselor, the mighty G*D,
the everlasting Father,
the prince of peace.'"
And if I was too insignificabnt for such words,
I had to suppose that G*D had chosen me for His son
because I has been born and had lived
in the midst of common people
rather than like a king.
Thereby I could understand many small virtues
and weak habits in others.
If I could increase in my powers
{and I knew that He would pass on many powers to me},
perhaps the world of men might multiply in virtue with me.
So I had begun to believe in my Father.
I would labor for Him.
Soon He would come te save Yerushalayim.
He was Lord of the Universe.
I would labor with joy.
Through Him, comfort would come to those who were sorrowful,
and the hungry would be fed, yes,
and those sinners in greatest despair would find their sins remitted.
And I felt such joy at these thoughts that I could not believe
they were my own.
Indeed, the Devil must have scraped me sore in my judgment,
for I was now ready to do all.
But then,
on this new morning I was not much afraid of Satan.
He had captured only a small part of me.
I had been tested, had proved loyal,
and now my tongue began to feel clean.
As I walked,
there was the smallest and sweetest of modest miracles.
In this desert waste I came upon a small tree and it bore plums that slaked my thirst and gave a sweet warmth to my limbs.
I fell to my knees and blessed my Creator,
yet before I could even begin to pray,
I came to my feet
again.

I was obliged to wonder.
Why had the Lord left me alone with Satan?
Was it to scourge me of an excess of piety?
Before long I would learn that there might be truth in this.
There was work to do,
and it could not be accomplished
on one's knees.

#

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18 okt 2004 - bewerkt op 05 feb 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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