Naaman sat beneath his acacia tree. Gentle and austere, his thoughts
usually concerned themselves with the universe and with God, who he did
not believe belonged exclusively to the Jews. However, he no longer
felt called upon to say so, unless he was asked; then he stated his
opinions with dignity but without the least hope of convincing any one.
When any one wished to know why he, who loved peace, clung to such
disturbing ideas, he replied, “I am an old man, and I like to have in
my mind only what is comfortable there.”
Now, however, his brows were drawn in a frown, and he looked gloomily
at Jonah, who sat with bent head at his feet. And his hands, as he
caressed his long white beard, trembled with age, with pity, and with
indignation.
“So, my son,” he said, “you have hurt yourself. When you were a child
you used to come running to me with eyes full of tears, to show me some
bruise you had received. I can still remember what I used to tell you:
if you did not fall you would not get a bump. The one followed the
other, almost as to make one believe that they were the same thing. And
so I used to ask you: Jonah, are you crying because of the fall or the
bump? Well, my son?”
Jonah smiled sadly. “Yes,” he replied. “And then you went on to say
that I was not a philosopher. How that used to wound me, for I wished
above all things to be a philosopher.
“Well, now it is the bump that has made me cry, Naaman.”
Naaman nodded his head. “Exactly,” he said. “But do you think perhaps
you are any more of a philosopher than you were then? I doubt it, my
son. For you bring me your bruise with the same astonishment as of
old, not seeing that, having fallen, you can expect nothing else.”
Jonah spread out his hands in a gesture of discouragement. “How is one
to stand upright in this world then, Naaman,” he said, “being but a
man, and less than a god.”
The old hermit regarded him gravely. “You are not a man, Jonah,” he
said finally; “although,” he added quickly, “you are not a god, either.
But you are not a man in the sense that your brother Aaron is a man.
Nor do you live in the world he lives in. You belong to another world
altogether, as different from that one as Thebes from Nineveh.
“And that world, my son, where you belong, is not here, among the
tribes, among the towns and villages. It is in the desert; it is in the
wilderness, where there is quiet for God to speak, where there is room
for His angels to move about. When you left Golan, your heart was like
the desert, spacious and calm. But now it is like a crowded village,
full of tumult and pain.”
“Yes,” said Jonah in a low voice, “it is full of pain.”
“I hoped you would not stay here,” continued Naaman; “I implored you to
return to Golan, to your home. Yet you stayed; with the result it was
impossible not to foresee.”
“I did not foresee it,” said Jonah.
“That is because you are ignorant,” said Naaman severely. “You do not
know the world, yet you wish to live in it.”
“No,” said Jonah, “that is not true. For such things do not happen to
everybody, or to other people. Why, love is holy, Naaman. It is as
though God had told a lie.”
“Be silent,” exclaimed Naaman harshly, “and do not blaspheme. Love
is not holy; and God does not lie. That alone is holy which concerns
itself with holy things. But love ... no, my son; it is pain and
impurity, it is violence and sorrow. The world of desire is the world
of demons, of concealment, of Sathariel which hides the face of mercy.”
Jonah regarded the old man with astonishment. “You are so bitter,” he
exclaimed; “I have never heard you speak in that tone before.”
Naaman peered off beneath his shaggy white eyebrows to the distant
hillside, swimming in the haze of summer heat. For a moment he did not
speak, but presently he said, sighing,
“You know but little of my life, my son. I, too, loved in my youth.
Does that surprise you? Yes, it is hard to imagine that old men have
ever been in love, swept by the flames of passion and of sorrow. And
sometimes it is hard for the old to remember how it goes with the young
men, with their joy, and their pain.
“I, too, was young like you, Jonah. Do you think your heart is the
first to break? Other hearts have broken before; and other men have
wept, as you are weeping. I know; for I, too, wept, Jonah, my son.”
He was silent. Jonah took the old man’s trembling hand between his two
brown palms. “I am sorry,” he said. And he remained respectfully silent.
“But, Naaman,” he broke out at last, “what then is holy here on earth?”
Naaman replied gently and inexorably, “My son, the love of earth is
holy, the love that God bears the least of His creatures, without
desire, without envy, and without malice. That mercy and generosity
with which the sun warms and the soil nourishes its flowers and trees,
is holy; all that gives of itself, without reason, without measure, and
without return. For that is the way of God; it is the way of the One,
from which all things spring, to which all things return. Go back to
the desert, Jonah; go back to the desert, and learn that God is One,
and that His love is holy.”
But Jonah did not understand him. “Yes,” he said. “I shall go back
to the desert, because that is all I can do. But I shall have no
happiness, Naaman; my heart will never be at peace again. There is no
beauty in the world for me now, ever. Oh, Naaman,” he cried suddenly,
clasping his hands together, “if God loves His creatures, how can He
make them suffer so?”
Naaman looked sadly at the young prophet whose face was hidden from
him. “Must you have beauty, too, Jonah?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Jonah.
Rising to his feet, he added, “You do not know what it is to love and
to be unhappy.”
And he went home again. As he entered his yard, a green beetle crossed
his path. He went a few steps out of his way in order to tread upon it.