Only once per year—on the Day of Atonement—was the High Priest
permitted to enter the Holy of Holies, the most sacred room of God’s
house. Only this once, without being punished on the spot by a bolt
from the Almighty. Yet it was to the Holy of Holies that Johanan now
directed his steps. He desired to see God, and death held no terrors
for him. His heart was embittered, his spirit downcast. He was not
of God’s chosen few. What mattered to him a continuance of life in
unworthiness?
He prepared himself with ablutions and performance of sacrifice, and
clothed himself in white. Before the entrance to the Holy of Holies
he paused for a moment. In fear, but also in expectation: perhaps
God would yet send him a token. It was everywhere so still, and the
semi-darkness of the room in which he stood was as though peopled
with spirits. He looked in horror about him and his heart beat
wildly. He did not retreat, however, nor did he desist from his firm
purpose. With unbending will, yet with trembling hand, he opened the
heavy door to the Holy of Holies, and dashed, rather than walked,
into it. His eyes were as if dazzled, his legs sagged beneath him,
his heart was almost rent. He leaned against the wall to keep from
falling. He neither saw nor heard anything. He stood rooted in great
terror.
Gradually he recovered his composure. How long had he been there? And
he was still alive? His eyes opened wide with astonishment; he tore
himself away from the wall and surveyed his surroundings. All was
silent and calm in the dark solitude of the room. The Satijah stone,
the Rock of the World, which stood there in place of the vanished
Holy Ark, he felt rather than saw. Silence. A vast silence. He rolled
his eyes about, listening intently. Nothing. Four bare walls, the
Satijah Stone and he alone. And nothing else. He cried aloud with
amazement. And his present stupefaction was even greater than his
previous terror. He straightened himself out, proud and arrogant. His
countenance grew stern and ireful. He began, from force of habit, to
go out with his back to the entrance and with his face to the Ark,
but at once he wheeled about and with firm steps left the Holy of
Holies and the Temple.
He went to Athaliah, the beloved of Jason, son of Meshulem.
She looked at him in surprise and fright. The High Priest in her home!
“I have come for your love,” he said.
She screamed and recoiled from him with hand upraised to defend
herself.
“I am handsome and strong and capable of inspiring a woman’s passion.
You yourself said so, and I have come for your love.”
She tried to flee but firmly he barred her way.
“I have had nothing of all my life. Nothing of my beauty and
strength. Your own Jason said so. Now I desire to enjoy what I have
missed as long as strength and beauty remain with me.”
She wished to make an outcry, but her throat was as if tightened with
fetters.
He embraced her with a powerful arm and she turned and writhed as
though a snake were coiling about her.
And he spoke:
“I have come for your love. Are you afraid of me? Do I arouse your
aversion? Am I too old for you? My white hair recalls the snowy cold
of death. But I still live and am strong and passionate, and I have
come for your love.”
Athaliah, ghastly pale, squirmed in his arms and gasped, in fright
and loathing. “Let me go! Let me go!”
But he took her in his arms and with his keen eyes seemed to devour
her beauty.
“I’ll have your love. You shall have to belong to me. If not
willingly, then by force. I am all-powerful; you know that. Your life
is in my hands, and the life of your sweetheart, and the life of all
those near and dear to you.”
Athaliah now regained her voice. “No! No!” she shrieked. “Kill _me_!
Slay me alone!”
“You shall belong to me. I do not wish your death. I desire you in
your living beauty. I am very wealthy,—the richest of all our people.
I will clothe you in gold and silver, and bedeck you with precious
stones. Ask what you wish and it shall be granted. Why do you fear me
so? I am old in years, but strong in body, and I wish to enjoy that
strength. Be mine and you shall never regret it.”
His words, which echoed with gold, and his arm, which spoke of great
masculine strength, changed Athaliah’s mind. She became the mistress
of the High Priest, but for a few days only. For a savage fury befell
the High Priest; he desired to enjoy the pleasures of the senses more
and more, and he changed his mistresses every day, intoxicated with
lust and wine. Then, to the great horror of his people, he also took
to drinking.
His wife, his children, and all those who were truly pious and
decent, together with all to whom the honour of their people was
very dear, tried with despair in their hearts to turn him from the
terrible life he had begun to lead. They also tried to learn how all
this had so suddenly come to him,—how he could so completely have
forgotten God. But he did not speak to them; he was as one dumb. And
it seemed that no invocation of God or the Torah could touch his
heart or his ear.
And many who were not decent, and to whom the honour of their people
was worth less than the smallest coin that fell into their purses,
became his flatterers and pandered to his desires. For he was
prodigal with his gold, and that was all they desired of him; the
deeper he sank into lust and dissipation, the more gold came into
their clutches.
Soon, however, his eighty years began to tell. He grew weak and
impotent, but he could still guzzle and he became a disgust and a
fright.
The people felt that they must be freed of him, and his death was
decided upon. They remembered, however, what he had been for eighty
years and none cared to lay hands upon him. It was resolved that his
death should be an honourable one, happening as if by accident. And
once, on an evening in which he had drunk more than usual, he was
abducted from his sycophants, taken into the mountains and left lying
upon the brink of a precipice over a deep sea. No one’s hand was
lifted to thrust him over the edge, and with tears in their eyes and
sad shakings of their heads they abandoned him to his fate.
He lay motionless, sunk in a deep sleep. But the first rays of the
rising sun awakened him. He stretched out his arms as if to reach for
the wine that stood now always before him. He grasped only the air.
He groped and groped about and at last opened his eyes. He opened
them wider and wider, distending them more and more. Where was he? He
looked around, to this side and to that, above and below. He saw the
abyss. Slowly and gradually it dawned upon him that he lay upon the
brink of a high precipice. How had he come hither? Who had brought
him? Slowly and leisurely he looked over the edge. If he should fall
in.... Then he understood. This was his death-sentence. He had been
condemned to death and the hands of his judges were to remain clean.
His blood boiled. He wished to arise at once, but he was not strong
enough. He rolled his head about, thumped the earth with his fists,
gnashed his teeth. Weary and utterly exhausted, he remained lying
there and somewhat later began to gaze around him. Where on earth was
he?
He beheld before him a large sea girded by green mountains. It looked
like a huge cauldron, over which arose the queen of day, pure,
youthful and flaming. From the mountain forests far and near there
wafted up to her a thin blue mist. The earth was uncovering itself
before the sun, receiving its beams with delight, shouting to her
in radiant green. Quite near to him there sparkled dazzlingly the
snow-capped peak of Mount Lebanon, mischievously reflecting with all
the colours of the rainbow its lance-like rays of the sun. And the
calm, deep sea received into its bosom all the light of heaven and
earth and redoubled their splendour.
Johanan lay and gazed without taking into account what he saw, but he
was inundated with the surrounding splendour. And suddenly his lips
began to murmur, “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, Thou art
very great; thou art clothed with honour and majesty. Who coverest
Thyself with light as with a garment; who stretchest out the heavens
like a curtain.”
Thus he murmured and his spirit was not with him. He did not know
what issued from his lips. He repeated it several times. Always the
same passages. “Bless the Lord, O my soul. O Lord, my God, Thou art
very great; Thou art clothed with honour and majesty....” And his
heart became softer and softer.
Then he suddenly became aware of what he was saying and was startled.
God’s name upon his lips! He, full of God,—of God, against whom he
had spoken, against whom he had rebelled so arrogantly! He burst into
tears. Ever so softly, without the slightest sound, but his heart
was torn, rent asunder. He was weeping over the last few weeks, over
the wretched life he had been leading, and his subdued crying was
filled with deep lamentation, filled with regret and repentance, yet
his eyes did not turn from the great beauty and glory around him. It
seemed to him that now, for the first time, he grasped that which all
his life he had not known. He who creates such a wealth of beauty and
splendour cannot be merely austere and harsh. And in his dejection he
was consoled by the hope that God was good, merciful and loving.
He tried to arise, return to his people and tell them what he had
there discovered, but his strength abandoned him. Then he knew that
his end had come. He was terrified. God! Anything but to be left
lying there in the ugliness of death! But soon he composed himself.
He began to murmur a prayer, opening his eyes wide in contemplation
of God’s beautiful world. And when he felt that his eyes were growing
heavy, he made only a single movement—and he fell like lead into the
deep waters.